Indian Dance

...Without improvisation, dance is a gymnasium," Shanta Rao has said...

...It is the body of woman as child-bearer, as earth mother, the rounded body of an archaic temple sculpture...

...After years of exacting training begun in childhood, the dancer completely assimilates this language of movement and ideally employs it with perfect freedom, choosing her theme and developing it in her own inspired improvisations...

...Beside these men kneel two women wearing colorful but subdued saris—a vocalist, who sometimes chinks blocks of shiny metal, and Shanta's aunt, who operates the drone bellows and functions as nattunvar or rhythm chanter...

...Like most members of the audience, I brought to her performances no special knowledge of Indian dance, yet I felt closely attuned to her intention, especially in those passages of impassioned improvisatory movement that alternate with the more deliberate and conventional formulas: the ritual of call and response, familiar from jazz, the thrilling interplay between drummer and dancer, each imparting inspiration to the other and providing the ecstatic climax of every number...

...The more, in fact, one sees of the dance, theater and music of the ancient cultures, the more strongly one intuits archetypal patterns of art and experience which seem to spread across the world like the roots of a mighty tree, severed at its base but still growing deep under ground...

...The dancer's movements emanate from the ventral or pelvic region and bear downward in either waistbending arm sweeps, like the strokes of a scythe-reaper, or heavy (and audible) foot slaps from thigh-lifted legs...

...Only after the mood of the raga, developed through the high descant of the flute, has pervaded the theater and suffused a half-lit stage with a ritual charisma, does the dancer enter...

...As she slowly moves her head in a serpentine swivel, one drinks in the astonishing richness of her costume and accoutrements —the brilliant red and orange sari, the heavy gold ornaments studded with rubies, the long black hair braided with red and white flowers hanging down to her loins, and the thick-wound ankle bells above bare feet whose soles are painted scarlet...

...Famous for her beauty, her face glowing with the joy of one who brings a welcome offering to the gods, Shanta Rao enthralls her audience immediately, stirring in them emotions as old as the race...

...Like those Oriental statues that radiate arms in every direction, the Indian dancer works from the fixed center of a powerful torso...

...Coming to the center of the stage, she slowly subsides into a squatting attitude: chin held back against the neck, legs outspread in an angular diamond repeated in the position of the arms, which are upraised, elbows out, palms pressed together...

...And as the physique cultivated for Western dancing is determined by the character of that dance, with its aspiration toward flight—its leaps, lifts, and toe-point postures—so the Indian dancer's body is shaped to the style of Oriental dance...

...And when she does, it is with an aura of magnificence and quiet dignity almost impossible to describe...

...Indian dance is partly abstract decorative movement, partly a stylized enactment of certain legends of the gods...

...The body of this Indian dancer —so different from the slender, epicene form of the Western dancer —is solid, potent, almost massive within the elaborate swathings of her costume...

...But the monotony that might result from this static bearing is avoided by the use of asymmetric attitudes —with, say, one arm extended laterally to a sharply broken wrist and the other gracefully curved, the index finger set against the cheek...

...When the dancer represents the loves of Vishnu or his struggles with evil demons, she employs a complex sign language involving the whole body...

...And this effect of virtual possession was heightened by the dancer's perfect control and decorum...

...In the Orient, dance is telluric...

...According to the system of Bharata Natyam —the fundamental style of classical Indian dance expounded in 36 books of ancient derivation—there are 24 movements for single hands, 13 for combined hands, 10 arm movements, five chest movements, five each for waist, thigh and hip movements and 36 kinds of glances for expressing various emotions and sentiments...

...After watching Shanta Rao perform what was essentially the same dance at two different performances, I was deeply impressed by her powers of invention...

...ON MUSIC By Albert Goldman Indian Dance Shanta Rao, the great Indian temple dancer, does not appear on stage until an atmosphere of religious mystery has been established by her musicians: a supple-wristed midranglist (double drum player) and a paunchy flutist, both dressed in white and seated cross-legged on mats at one side of the stage...