Dance of Soul!

This is a tribute to the two who inspired me to take interest in dances and write about it to the best of my ability. Both are biding their time to reappear on the stage one for Kuchipudi and another for Bharatanatyam. These are no great names. But then you dont dance for popularity nor for attention. You dance because you need to. You dance because your soul tells you to. You dance because there is nothing else that will give you the happiness of meeting with yourself, your inner self as you spin on the stage.

Creative people and that definitely includes Kuchipudi artists certainly seem to be quite a moody lot. Even the best of them tend to get disillusioned and withdraw themselves into a shell. There are no particular reasons for this. It just happens that one day you decide to hang your payals or salangai (the jingling leg ornament) and that is that. Days and months and even years pass by and the memory of the stage and the sounds of the cymbals and mridangam are lost in mists of time and one fine day it all comes back. And How!
Suddenly things revive the stage swims back into the realms of reality and the make up has been done and the and costumes are characteristic of the art, bright and beautiful have been worn. The long plaits have been intricately done and the flowers are in place so also the head ornaments like Rakudi the hand ornaments Chandra Vanki and the neck ornaments Adda Bhasa and Kasina sara is been adorned. The jingling jewellery for the feet is daintily hugging the twin feet. Everything is set and the nervousness of the stage and the fear of returning to it after so many years lost is thing of the past.

what remains is the audience, the thrill of appearing before this group of sharp witted rasikas, some of whom may know the art some ignormus, but all would be ready to witness the etheral performance that would evolve before them as the evening will wear on.

Nothing matters to me saki, I am Rukmini, I am Sathyabama, I am Krishna, I am gopika, I am the cause of the world, I am the destroyer of the earth, I am the reviver, I am the almighty and I am the ignorant, I am all and I am noone. I am everything and I am nothing. The feet will tap out rhythemically the songs written so many years ago by the great artists gone long past. The stage they strode the notes that they sang, the music to which they danced is all there but the dancing feet is gone. If I had not come back to this dance floor even I would have been forgotten to relics of time, the yellowing pages of history, to the memories of a few living beings, to the pages of books where a small reference to my work would have been made, may be to the websites which alluded to me when I performed.

But I am not history, I am not time, I am here, I am dancing I am going to be your being, I am going to be my being. I am going to dance and I am going to live through my dance, albeit for the brief time slot that is provided to me. I am the beginning and I am the end and because I am there the world is bright and beautiful. Because I dance the world is rejoicing. This is not vanity but this is reality. If I had not been dancing, someone wouldhave been. After all there were so many dancers before and so many more would come after me. And yet since I am here I matter. The world is there because I am there and when I am gone the world will still be there and you will be there and one day even you will be gone and yet the world will still be there. The stage will still be set, the percussion instruments will still be made and the ageless Kuchipudi will still be practised. I want to enjoy the time slot provided to me so that I can be part of the ever present world to which I am but a brief visitor.

I chose to come back to the stage because I need to come back I need to be part of this scene, this is my soul , this is my meaning of life this is the etheral dance which the Lord Shiva himself lent his soul to at the beginning of everything. The celestial dance will continue in many myriad form. I will dance because the Lord danced.

The day will wear on, the audience would clap, the feet will beg to be relieved, the back will cry for attention, the sweat will tell me that I am done and yet I will be back on stage again and again, till such time I will bid adieu and all that, not because I need to go but because I choose to go!