Dance - The Life of Feet!

“Dancers dream with their feet” - Anonymous

A life of a dancer is a soul connection of music with the dancer’s feet. A true dancer can never stop self from not getting turned on the moment sound beat enters the ear and suddenly the feet tapping begins. What I have been learning throughout about dance is simply a way of love, a form of happiness, stress buster, the feeling of being free and also a great healer.

Understanding an artist and the art forms in which they excel looks easier but isn’t that easy path.

For dancers, their feet’s life is dance; their ears always search for some such track playing around in which their feet can just freely dance; their soul gets the peace and calm which in itself a serene feeling. The form of expressing out the emotions in the most beautiful way is what dance makes a dancer do.

Dance is an inspiration for any common person who isn’t into dancing but for a dancer it’s the root of their life for which they survive taking all the pains and turn it into the best treasure they can ever gain.

Dance is an expression of the soul more that it is of the body. The true dancer revels in the rhythm of even his or her own breathing. The key question then is does the dancer cease to exist when the body gets older just like sportsman.

The answer to that is definitely a no. Anyone who has genuinely been blessed with a love for dance will continue to feel the pull.  Age is a state of mind. All over the world, there are various dance forms engulfing the nuances of that culture. In India, while the folk dance forms celebrate the community feeling, the classical dance training goes deep within to train the soul. The mind and body then become accomplices to this training.

April 29, 2016, on World Dance Day it is worthy to discuss efforts which reflect this very same thought with a real life example. On March 10, 2016 this year, three generations of Kathak dancers came together on stage to celebrate the values, culture and inheritance that classical dance forms create.

A grandmother Sushma aged 70, a daughter Gauri and a grand daughter, Tavishi were enticing audience with their body movement in unison.

Gauri Chakraborty , The organizer of this unique event called  Vansh Vyom, has spent the last 2 years in conceptualizing this dance trio.  She says” we always imagine our mothers and grandmothers as people who care for the house, cook food, give us emotional support, but we hardly ever think what were the aspirations of our mothers when they were young? Were they able to achieve it ? If not then why? In my mother’s case, I realized that though she did learn and practice intensive dance in the 1960s, the society was not agreeable to a middle class family girl picking dance as her profession. As soon as she got married and became a mother, she kept her aspirations at the backside and her duty in the forefront. A s a daughter, I was able to see her unfulfilled dream to be on stage every day in her eyes for the last 30 years.’ 

The idea of the event was to reach out more senior women who have training on performing arts and inspire them to not only achieve their dreams but also pass on the love and inheritance that grandmothers have to the grandchildren in society.

Tavishi who is 8 years old is a live example that such transference is possible. In the modern high paced life of today, where children are occupied with inanimate hi tech gadgets for their recreation and also gaining knowledge, Tavishi has been able to imbibe the other side of Indian values and knowledge.

The event signified the debt we owe to our parents and society. It is important to have a thought on who will be the torch-bearers of or culture in the future? Whose responsibility is to pass on inheritance of our mothers to our children? Women have been equal partners to building this nation. Their relevance may have been restricted to their homes till their daughters got the opportunity to move out of gender specified roles but that doesn’t take away from the fact, that these senior citizens still are the silent repository of traditional knowledge.This knowledge is not just recipes and customs, but also skill based knowledge. On world dance day, one can only hope that there are many others who think about these aspects of society. If you know a senior citizen who is trained in Indian classical dance or music, do not hesitate to reach out to Vansh Vyom.

According to me, no dancer should stop dancing because the one who does so is taking away the life of feet, whose entire life is nothing but dance! When none of us has the right take away anyone’s life then why make a feet suffer from the pain of separation from its soul. 

I feel proud that Vansh Vyom is actually working towards a great future of the feet whose hearts’ haven’t stopped beating. It’s a great way to promote dancers forward in life and also a best way of maintaining our culture stay alive through this.