"The way you make me feel" and "Bad"

Notice my sister's hairstyle, and the flick of her arm every now and then, my parents and grand parents' paranoia about me dropping her on her head, and our fancy moves!!! (specially in "Bad")

Presenting, 1 year old Vanya and 4 year old Aranyani, dancing in the living room to Michael Jackson....

So, why Obama..

There are lots of reasons...call me pseudo-liberal, call me naive, call me an idealist...but today I heard a disappointed and dejected American woman say "Upon Obama's victory, I learnt not to be cynical and depressed." I went to Columbia University in NYC to listen to an election analysis by the common people of New York, and by some of the highly respected teachers at the University, and by contributers to papers like "The Nation" and "The New Yorker".

A white american woman sat there, beaming from ear to ear. For those of you interested in politics, this would be of interest to you. For those apathetic to it, I think you will still enjoy hearing what she had to say...

She started her talk by saying "Back in April, I'd placed a bet on McCain, and each time I was challenged, I only bet higher...I didn't have faith in the american people, and I believed that Republicans are geniuses of the manipulation of stupidity." She said she feared that not enough white people would vote for Barack Obama.

"But enough white people DID vote for Obama," she said. She continued by saying that Obama was a wonderful politician and communicated being a good person. He gave her faith that he had the ability to bridge the gaps between the people he agreed with, and those who didn't agree with him.

About the expectations the world had from him, she said "We've been a rogue-elephant country for the last 8 years...I don't expect the next 4 years to be as flawless as the campaign was. I expect him to just be a good enough president. I expect that he will undo or repair the bad things that Bush did. No one can know what's going to happen in the future. But WE have a duty to steer things a certain way too. We have a duty to make ourselves be heard to him. It's not just him...if we disagree with something, we have to make a big fuss about it. "

Other panelists spoke of the republicans like Colin Powell standing up for Obama being unprecedented, spoke of how his grace and poise capture the attention of everyone and put everyone at ease. "I'm surprised that I lived to see the day a brown skinned man becomes the president of our country," said Hendrick Hertzberg of the New Yorker, "We are very lucky to have stumbled into a presidency of the highest calibre we've ever had."

He's right. Obama is a Harvard Law Graduate. He learnt the law, as opposed to George Bush who only broke the law.

There are many reasons why I think Obama becoming the 44th president of the United States of America is a historical moment.

First, he is an inspirational figure to many. He's intelligent, he writes beautifully, intelligently and compassionately, he listens to what people have to say, he communicates well, and his oratory skills are remarkable (as opposed to their last president who said things like "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we" and "I promise you that I will listen to what has been said here, even though I wasn't here" and "I am here to make an annoucement that this thursday, tickets and airplane counters will fly out of Ronald Reagen Airport").

Secondly, he has changed the face of racial america. It's not that he is the first african-american president of America. It's the fact that he got the votes of a large percentage of the "race conscious" population of America. In other words, he forced the average mellow 'racist' to look beyond racial lines. He transcended race.

And yes, there will be 'black pride' in America. But why not. He earned the respect of the white people, despite the still existing racial undertones in the country. He had to watch every move of his to appear to be the perfect black man. Had he had Palin's family history, things wouldn't have gone down too well for him. (It was said that if Obama had a pregnant teenage daughter, it wouldn't have been met with the same understanding as Palin's situation was given. "That's not how they react to a black teenage mother", she said, "We don't say - Oh, its understandable. We say - You're the reason our country's going to the dogs!") Moreover, Obama becoming president has broadened the chances of other black presidents or a woman president, because we thought this was unthinkable and its happened!

His name - Barack Hussein Obama is also important. This sort of name, "which was a political liability will now become a diplomatic asset". He's not a 'secret muslim' as some Americans think, but even if he was, they elected him despite that. And that is also something!

Moreover, these elections were historic for America also because the youth proved to not be apathetic, the proved that their vote counts.

I know that many of us in India have been made wary of this man by certain remarks he made about Kashmir and Pakistan. For those still in doubt, you should read this - "Militants, not India, are the biggest threat to Pakistan" Either way, only time will tell how he shapes Indo-US relations, but everything about him points to the fact that he will listen, and won't unilaterally make a hasty decision. As Indians, we shouldn't fall into the trap of looking things from a narrow-minded perspective. EVEN if we don't like his policies about India and Pakistan, we can't withdraw support on that sole cause. That's being really selfish. This is the reason why Modi gets into power again and again. Because people are not looking at the greater picture, and are looking only at their own immediate gain (or what they perceive to be their immediate gain). We need to look at the greater picture here too. Obama is better for the world and better for America than anyone else in power in that country.

In the end, I have to say, being in the midst of all the apprehension, all the tension, the anticipation, the excitement, I see a new energy in America since yesterday. A happier and more hopeful America. For the first time, I've seen America as a victim. A victim of its own state, that is finally liberated from a reputation it has worn like a noose around its neck. A reputation of being a "rogue-elephant". Many of them hated themselves for 8 years, felt responsible for war crimes and felt disgusted and hapless and powerless. And today, I saw the hope of a new beginning in every American's eye that I met, on the streets of Manhattan.

You've been selected!

I don't know what it is with America wanting to encase me in glass boxes.

My performance in Washington was the first time I was almost encased into a glass room, asked to perform in there while people watched from outside. That was just ignorance about Bharatanatyam, I guess. I politely refused and they obliged.

I had a choice there though. As I was leaving from Washington to come to Ottawa, I faced the glass box again.

After a lot of confusion at the check-in counter with tickets on account of their failing systems, my father and I, the last remaining passengers for the flight to Ottawa, rushed towards security. The last call for boarding had been made, and our luggage, which could've only just reached the plane, would be offloaded within minutes if we didn't arrive at the gate of boarding.

When we reached the security inspector, she was playfully joking with one of the elderly ladies infront of me in line, saying "let's let this little girl go through first". The elderly lady being the little girl. How endearing.

Then the inspection officer asked for our "passports and boarding pass please". She took one quick look at us and looked away, and said "You've been selected.. (for an upgrade? a free ticket to vegas?)...for additional security..please pass through that way." A fat red marker slashed two huge red lines on the boarding pass diagonally, slicing through my name and my seat number. I'd been marked.

"But we're in a rush, we..."
"Go and stand in that line, please" The nasal voice of the officer stung my ears.

Initially confused but getting increasingly infuriated, I walked to the 'terrorist' line and started taking off my shoes, my bangles, my earrings. I hurriedly put everything into the trays and started walking through the metal detector.

Another African-American female officer held her hand out, motioning for me to wait.
"Where's your boarding pass?"
"It's in the tray with my passport"
She looked irritated. I became even more irritated.
They fished through my things and eventually produced the boarding pass. Upon seeing the big red lines, they exchanged a look, and asked me to step forward.
I came through the metal detector. Nothing beeped. I started walking towards my things.

"No..you can't go there. Please step into the enclosure, ma'am."

I hadn't even noticed the glass enclosure that stood slightly ahead of me. I saw my father already in there. I went inside and they closed the glass door.

I looked at abba and we saw realisation dawn in each other's eyes. This wasn't a simple random selection. We were in here for some other reason. We gave each other a sympathetic look as my father whispered, "They're going to do this once we get off at Ottawa too, aren't they.."

I looked around for about a minute while we waited. I was in a glass cage, and everyone outside of it was looking inside. I felt naked, humiliated and outraged. Other passengers with toy guns and lighters passed through, escaping the glass cage, looking at US as though WE had something we shouldn't be carrying. The lighter was left behind, but the passenger carried on to his destination. We were selected for additional security for carrying books on philosophy and political thought, and a dance costume with bells. Because we were brown. And my dad had a beard.

A white middle-aged officer walked up to me and frisked me. I had no problem with that, but maybe I should've. Yes, frisking passengers was airport regulation. But wasn't that neccesary only if the metal detector beeped? I believe that is the protocol in the rest of the world. I'm well travelled enough to know that. I started to walk out of the enclosure..I'd been in there long enough.

"No ma'am..please stay in there. I need you to point to your things"
"From in here?!?!"
"Yes ma'am."

I looked at her for a while, searching her face for some sort of discomfort or awkwardness. There was none. I stoically pointed to my things.

Then she moved aside and seizing the opportunity, I got out of the "enclosure". My dad was already somewhere else. I didn't know where. She walked to my things.

"Is this yours?"
I walked towards my laptop bag and reached for it.
"No, please don't touch anything...just point to your things"

Don't touch anything??!? Those were MY things! What the hell...I felt the urge to adopt the method of civil disobedience. I stopped talking. When they asked questions, I angrily pointed or nodded or shook my head, not making eye contact and without saying a word. Not that they cared, but I felt the satisfaction of fighting for my dignity in my own little way.

They carried my things to another enclosure. My dad was there, his hand luggage open and all its contents upturned. A fourth officer took my small suitcase and put it on the table and reached for the zip. It had a number lock on it. I smiled to myself.

"I need you to open this ma'am."
"I was told not to touch anything by that lady over there."

She wasn't too pleased by the defiance. But what could she do? Arrest me for obeying her senior? Hah.

"I need to look inside your suitcase ma'am. You have some bells in there?"
"Yes, I have some BELLS." She knew what was in there, but she still wanted it opened.
I opened the suitcase. She started rummaging through my things. I saw my toothbrush and one lone sanitary pad being tossed around. I saw curious by-standers peeping into my bag as well. A pang of hatred for the woman shot through my spine.

I turned to my father, "On what basis do these people decide who to select for additional security?" I said this loud enough for them all to hear. And they heard. I saw them averting their gaze from mine.

My dad told me to keep quiet, or we'd miss the plane. He did have a point. They had the power to make us miss our flight. And we had no authority to question theirs.

Once they were satisfied, they handed me back my boarding pass...a thick black line had exterminated the two red ones. My boarding pass now looked like a battlefield.

We don't see things as they are, but as we are.

The world is built in a particular way. But the way we see it is different.

Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher who is considered to be the last major philosopher of the Enlightenment, talked a lot about things in themselves, and things based on experience. He called his theory “Transcendental Idealism”.

“Everything intuited or perceived in space and time, and therefore all objects of a possible experience , are nothing but phenomenal appearances, that is, mere representations, which in the way in which they are represented to us, as extended beings, or as series of changes, have no independent, self-subsistent existence apart from our thoughts.”

– Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason.

Kant was a philosopher who mediated between Empiricism and Rationalism. Rationalists say that all knowledge is without experience. They call this a priori knowledge. It is a theory in which the knowledge is not sensory but intellectual and deductive. They believed that reason is the unique path to knowledge.

The Empiricist view, on the other hand, says that all ideas come to us through experience, either through our five senses of sight, smell, touch, hearing and taste, or through inner sensations such as pain and pleasure, and therefore that essentially, knowledge is based on and derived from experience. Empiricists therefore say that all knowledge is a posteriori i.e. it is based entirely on experience.

Kant said it was both. Kant said that things in themselves are not knowable. And he said that everything that you experience is partly created by you. He acknowledges that something comes from the outside through our sensory experience, but we cannot know anything with that alone. We receive senses from outside, but not passively. We modify them and therefore they are partly our own creation. If you see a table, according to Kant, when described as “a table for us” rather than “a table in itself” then you aren’t really talking about the world the way it is, but the kind of creatures you are, for who the world appears to be a certain way.

Another example – If a person is born with pink glasses, the entire world appears to him or her to be pink. That, for this person, is knowledge. He or she absorbs what the outside world gives him or her, through the senses, and because of the pink glasses, he or she modifies the world to make it seem a certain way. i.e. Everything appears to be pink. But just because he or she sees the world as pink does not mean the world is really pink.

What I’m trying to say is that we see the world through our own eyes and our experience. Therefore, as Kant says, absolute knowledge must include internal reason as well as external experience.

Also, “we” is never constant. There is no permanent state of “we”. We constantly change with the times, due to the changing external conditions. Hugely revered in many parts of South-east Asia and India, and now even in many parts of the west, the great thinker and philosopher Gautham Buddha said, “The only thing that is permanent is change.”

Furthermore, there is also no uniform “we”. So when we say we see things as we are, that is still a generalization. A classical musician might think of ‘hard rock’ as pure noise. But does that tell more about the object i.e. Hard rock, or the person i.e. the classical musician? Rock remains Rock, and each individual sees it differently, according to their own experience, upbringing, choices, preferences and social conditioning. Another example of this is the ancient erotic temples of Khajuraho in India. They portray sexually explicit but extremely graceful sculptures all over the temple walls. Victorian Englishmen saw and conservative Indians still see the sculptures as vulgar and crude. But today, most of us see them as objects of beauty. Again, the sculptures have remained the same since the time they were built between 950 A.D and 1050 A.D. It is our perception of these objects that has changed and our perceptions are different because we are all different. The way we see them changes because ‘we’ are neither constant nor uniform. This is another proof that we see things, not the way they are, but as we are. Our character, dispositions, influences, upbringing, social surroundings, and political beliefs - all affect our experience of knowledge of the world. We make a judgment about the world, and that says more about us, and how we are, who we are, and “as we are.”

This train of thought also got me thinking about the question about the distinction between high art and low art. That is also a question of who we are, rather than what the art is. Though the difference is not redundant, the distinction between high and low art is constantly changing as we change. Something which was considered low art earlier becomes high art. e.g. Isadora Duncan’s dance was very unpopular and criticized when she first started to dance, but over time and especially by the time she died, she was one of the most revered dancers in the world. Today she is referred to as the pioneer of Contemporary dance, an inspiration to legends of contemporary dance like Martha Graham, for whom she paved the way to survival, great appreciation and fame.

Since I am on the subject of high and low art, the other thing I feel is necessary to point out is that the culture of the masses has never been perceived to be high art. This is wrong. Very often, what is elite has been derived from the masses. A prime example of that is the form of dance that I do. Bharatanatyam is an ancient south Indian dance form that was danced by devadasis (servants of the gods) in temples. It wasn’t respected. And over time, it was brought out of the temples and became a staged art, watched and understood mostly by the elite who changed their perception of it. Now it is considered a high art. The object which we call art in this context has remained constant and unchanging. Yes, it has evolved and developed, but its nature has remained the same. It is our experience of the art, and our personal opinions and inclinations that have changed it’s perception as a high or low art.

The very concept of High art was brought about by the constant changing of people i.e.“we”. It came about in the Renaissance and the romantic period. Before this period, Michelangelo was just a painter who painted buildings and ceilings. In India, importance was given to Brahmans (priests) and Kshatriyas (warriors), rather than Vaishyas (artists). It was during the romantic period that the distinction came about, because of our changing perception of the object. i.e. art.

High art became a skill that required imagination and an internal standard of excellence whereas low art was not considered to be that skillful. Of course, if the world considers high art to be elite and low art to be associated with the masses, then I disagree with the above definitions that I have put forth. In that case, I don’t believe in high art and low art, but rather good and bad art, which exist both in the elite and the masses. Here itself, I have redefined the meanings of High and Low art based on my own points of view, my own social, political and personal understanding of the world. The nature of the art remains unchanged. It is my perception of it that changes. It does not change as an object in itself, it changes because of the way I see it. So metaphorically, I could say that I see it differently because I am wearing a certain coloured glasses.

Jean Paul Sartre, a well known author, philosopher and existentialist, is another revered man who talks about objects as seen by the mind. In his article “The Work of Art”, he says there are two kinds of objects – the real object and the aesthetic object. He says that in a picture, the ‘real object’ is the object that appears to us in physical space. But he says that it also occurs in imaginative space as an ‘aesthetic object’. And though when we observe the real objects of the picture, the aesthetic object will not appear - we must realize that the aesthetic object has not hidden itself. Sartre says that it’s just that it cannot present itself to a ‘realizing consciousness’. The aesthetic object will appear at the moment when our consciousness undergoes a radical change and becomes imaginative.

He goes on to say that the ‘real object’ constitutes the result of the brush strokes, the stickiness of the canvas, the polish over the colours and so on. But all this does not constitute the object of aesthetic appreciation. So when we see a painting, we ordinarily see paint, colours, and the canvas. It is when our consciousness undergoes a radical change into the imaginary from time to time, do we see the aesthetic object of beauty in art.

He, too believes that the real object itself is just an object that can be seen as beautiful or not beautiful by the person who perceives it after undergoing a change in his mind that makes him imaginative. Depending on the person’s imaginative conditioning, he or she will see the object as either beautiful or unappealing. This imaginative conditioning that determines the final verdict of the quality and appreciation of the art is nothing but who we are, and “as we are”.

To conclude - by applying the philosophical theories and ideas of great philosophers such as Kant and Sartre, and by giving several examples, “We see things not as they are, but as we are” appears to be true. Perhaps if we were all one big unit of identical individuals with the same upbringing, conditioning and the same points of view on everything, we would really see the world as it is – objectively and uniformly the same for everyone. But because we are all different and unique, and changing all the time, we all see things differently and see things based on our own personal experience of them.

We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.

This is an article I wrote to send to universities where i'm applying to do an MA in Art History.

Terror, Chaos and Confusion

Here I am, sitting in Delhi after the nth bomb blast, and I'm numb. For some inane reason, I think I have bigger problems to solve.

I wish I could be 5 again..everything was so simple. No complicated lifestyle, no complicated habits, no complicated relatives, friends and relationships. No complicated plans. It was all so simple.

I've been spewing for the last four days. You're thinking - Gross.
I know.
I haven't the faintest idea why. I've ruled out some possibilities, thanks to modern medicine, but I still haven't the foggiest. Looking it up on the internet is NOT a good idea. Its better to go to a doctor (stating the obvious).

The internet says I could have ulcers, or kidney stones, or cancer! Hahaha. The doc will probably tell me its a stomach bug.

Got an email from my Guru today. Guru....I don't know what that means anymore..

Bleh.

Mental note - Get a life.

p.s. oh, and i know i've done that whole pretentious blog writing thing right now,by the way...i'm not quite sure what i'm doing back on my blog, today of all days.

Hmmmmm.

What is Dance?

Dance...what is dance? In a philosophy class that was conducted at Attakkalari, this question was raised. And the end result was an assignment we had to submit. We were given a week or so to complete the assignment and hand it in. I spent most of that time wondering how the hell I would ever manage to answer this question - What is dance? How was I going to define something so large? Why was it so difficult to define something that meant so much to me?

Artists are sometimes so aware of their creativity and so confident about their creative potential that they disregard the need to address things from an intellectual perspective. I think it's very easy to say - Dance is life. Dance is energy. Dance is birth and death. Dance is everything and in everyone.

But really...what is dance? What have the wise ones who dedicated their lives to making sense of so much in the world that we take for granted? What have they said about dance over the centuries of methodical, logical and philosophical thought?

Can you imagine...Dance as a topic of aesthetic concern first appeared in philosophical literature in Plato’s Laws, where it figured as an educational device – a way in which public dance festivals are to celebrate and enhance civic order. Plato’s idea was that dance was that sort of body movement which should be expected to confer an improvement of physique, manners or morals.

Writing a little later than Plato, Aristotle observed that dance steps can be used to imitate emotion and character as well as action, and the question how this can be so became a part of the resources of aesthetics through the repeated revivals of his work.

In the early 18^th century, the system of fine arts found little room for dance. In the pure aesthetic that Emmanuel Kant developed in his third Critique, dance hardly appears, perhaps for the same reason that he denied true beauty to the face tattooings of the Maori, saying that one cannot separate the patterning from the human reality of the face, so that the aesthetic judgment becomes confused with sentiment. Kant clearly did not think much of dance!

A quite different way of looking at art developed in late 18^thcentury romanticism. Art and language, according to this train of thought, could have only arisen among humans through the development of significance in undifferentiated body movements – in effect, in dance. A Cartesian thought, at some level. This leads to something else that I have doubts about. Are other beings, e.g. animals like monkeys, sea mammals like dolphins, insects like butterflies - incapable of dance? But this calls for another whole different blog entry!

In the 19^th century, dance was seen as exploiting the movement potential of bodies whose beauty comes from health and efficiency, as opposed to an enhancement and celebration of social graces. By the end of the century, athletics, gymnastics, movement education, and dance went hand in hand. This convergence gave rise to an alternative tradition in artistic dance, and the rival claims of ballet and of this alternative were vigorously debated under many ideological guises.

The central figure of this alternative tradition was Rudoplf Laban. In terms of immediate artistic impact, the key figure was Isadora Duncan(one of my idols...for those of you interested in dance, read her autobiography!!! One of the most inspiring reads ever!), whose practice and writing combined a body liberating aesthetic with a powerful ideology of democracy, nature and feminism(and by feminism, i don't mean the pseudo/hyper feminism we associate some forms of feminism with, today).

The next transformation in dance in the West came about when dance achieved a recognizable identity under the figure of Martha Graham. Graham had a method and theory that were dance and nothing but dance, radically opposed to the whole theory of human movement and motivation of which ballet rested.

In the years since 1940, the shifting relations between ballet and modern dance in America have continued to be a many sided topic for profound aesthetic reflection.

In the 1960s, Merce Cunnigham emerged as an important figure, who was reacting specifically against the way Graham’s technique could become as constraining as ballet. Cunningham’s work explored questions such as whether a movement is a dance movement because of its character, its context, the attitude of its performer or spectator, or all or none of the above.

The testing of the limits of the arts in the 1960s tended to dissolve the distinction among the arts, and what emerged and survived could not contribute in any special way to the aesthetics of any one particular art, such as dance. Meanwhile, teachers, students, performers and spectators still continue to concern themselves with what is distinctively dance.

Having spoken about the west, I’d like to talk a little about the history and evolution of Indian dance too, briefly. Being a Bharatanatyam dancer, I will confine my exploration of the history of Indian dance to this particular Indian classical art form very briefly.

Just as the west made an evolution from Ballet to Contemporary, from Isadora Duncan to Martha Graham, Bharatanatyam too, evolved greatly over the ages. The earliest accounts of Bharatanatyam seem to point towards the fact that it was first performed in temples by men and boys dressed up as women.

In the 16^th century, the Tanjore Quartet edited the Bharatanatyam format into its present form. By this time, Bharatanatyam was performed by women in temples. These women were called Devadasis or the servants of god. It was in the medieval times that devadasis came to be known also as courtesans but not before that. Prior to that, they were dancers who performed in temples sometimes as a sort of offering to the gods.

E.Krishna Iyer was one of those who raised the social status of Bharatanatyam and greatly popularized it. Rukmini Devi Arundale was also instrumental in modifying mainly the Pandanallur style of Bharatanatyam and bringing it to the attention of the West. Rukmini Devi raised Bharatanatyam to a puritan art form, divorced from its recently controversial past by "removing objectionable elements" from the Pandanallur style. This was publicly criticized by Balasaraswati, one of the last devadasis and other representatives of the traditional devadasi culture.

In any case, Rukmini Devi brought the dance form out of the temples and onto the stage. Rukmini Devi founded Kalakshetra in 1936, a school in Madras for Dance and Music. Out of this institution emerged many great dancers, including such as Leela Samson, my guru. :)

Today, Bharatanatyam is performed by people of all genders and cultures, after rigorous training. There are dancers who used Bharatanatyam and explored it differently, like my own Guru Leela Samson. Others fused it with contemporary styles to create vocabularies of their own. Chandralekha and Shobana Jeyasingh are amongst them. Chandralekha used Kalakshetra trained dancers to create her own vocabulary that used elements of Bharatanatyam, Kalaripayettu and Yoga. Shobana Jeyasingh fuses Bharatanatyam with western Contemporary Dance.

Being a philosophy student, I would love to share Wittgenstein's theory of family resemblances with you. He provies a philosophical mechanism - the theory of family resemblences - that I would like to apply to this discussion about the definition of dance. Wittgenstein did not believe in essences. He opposed Plato's theory of forms, because Plato's ideal form and in his theory of forms, form refers to essence. The form is an ideal essence of the natural object. Wittgenstein belonged to the tradition of "Antiessentialism". He didn't believe that patterns, forms and resemblances cannot be found amongst different things labeled as say "dance". The problems arises when we try to see one of these patterns or common features to define dance. A single commonality is impossible to find.

At the same time, we cannot deny certain resemblances. So we can apply this theory of family resemblances. Taking the example of my own family. My mother and father gave birth to me and my sister. Other than the genetic resemblance, people say I look like my father and have the mannerisms of my mother. Some people say that my sister looks like neither my dad or my mum. But the same people say that my sister and i look almost identical. My sister and I do not have a single feature that is common between us. Our hair is different, our skin is different, our noses are different, her lips are fuller, my eyes are bigger etc etc. But we call this a family resemblance. So some characteristics, but not all, serve the ground for my relationship with her. I cannot point out one single characteristic and expect to find a commonality there.

Its much the same with dance. To define dance is very hard for me. But using Wittgenstein's theory of family resemblances, I can understand a little bit about how to answer this question - what is dance. While I may not find a resemblance between a contemporary dance performance I saw in Israel where four naked women stood on stage and moved, and Bharatanatyam. I may find a link between the Israeli performance and Martha Graham, for instance. In turn, i may see a resemblance between balletic movements in Martha Graham's style, and the aramandi (plie) in Bharatanatyam. So through the theory of famiyl resemblances, I could put them all under the same roof, although through the naked eye, i would see no resemblence between that contemporary performance and a bharatanatyam performance.

Having said all of the above, I must end with this - From a non-philosophical/non-intellectual perspective, I still find it extremely hard to define Dance.

You see, at the end of the day, from a personal perspective (we all know about the common notion that artists are so sensitive and they take things so personally!), I have to say that dance means different things to different people. A contemporary dancer might have broken away from Ballet for the very reason that he/she did not consider ballet to be dance anymore, after having explored contemporary dance. Similarly, a Bharatanatyam dancer may find the Israeli dance performance to be 'making a statement' rather than dancing, and a contemporary dancer may say making a statement is dancing. A ballet dancer, in turn, may say making a statement has its limits as far as dance is concerned..and so on. The argument could go on forever. And it's because we all, as individuals, are different. And as dancers, we are different.

Moreover, there are so many different forms of dance in so many different parts of the world, I think it might be difficult to find one common characteristic amongst them that can be the essence or defining factor that makes something one calls dance, DANCE. To really define what dance is, might mean exploring ALL of these millions of classical, tribal, folk, contemporary, creative, commercial and other forms thoroughly, and I can safely say this is not possible to do.

Also, Dance is not a static entity. How are we to DEFINE something that is never static? It's definition, significance and meaning are forever changing and evolving. Its beauty lies therein.

I wonder what it is that has driven away my motivation to write on my blog...it's something I used to do religiously!

I hope to tackle this problem and get back here soon.

Troubled today

"You can only love others once you learn to love yourself"

How do you help someone who is clearly on a pathway to self destruction? I don't really want practical answers to this question..I'm just here to vent. I know that what people will say to me are things I've already heard.

I'm so frustrated! I've met a lot of people in my short life, and I'm happy to to able to say that I was able to help a fair amount of them selflessly whenever they needed my help..but today - I'm absolutely flummoxed. I don't have a clue!

How do you help people who i'll admit have had it tough (but haven't others..many of us!?) but are drowning themselves in the catastrophic whirlpool of alcohol consumption, blaming others for the fuck ups in their lives, giving up things that are good for them, replacing those things with things that are the yellow brick road to absolute disaster?

Isn't it the height of irony? We say we drink to get high and happy, but alcohol is a medically certified depressant, we say drugs help us escape from gruesome realities but they actually make you paranoid and open doors to your life that you might've dealt with and closed years ago, and we say smoking relieves stress, but actually it increases your blood pressure?


How do you try to tell someone that they're ruining their one chance of getting back on track? And how do you prepare for an answer to the question they might ask you 5 years later - why didn't you stop me?

How do you stop someone from ruining their own life? do you just say - hey its his/her life/choice? Or do you go out there and do something drastic? Do you wait for a tragedy to occur that might alter that self destructive lifestyle and force a change? Or do you try to avert that disaster before it happens?

How do you sit back and just watch them getting consumed by negativity and consuming intoxicants incessantly? Do you sit back and watch? Do you take action? Is it your business to do so? Or do you walk away? How do you walk away without looking back? How do you know with absolute certainty that you couldn't have done ANYTHING to help?

I've never been one to give up on people, even when in retrospect perhaps I should've given up on some before they pulled me into their world of ugliness. Is that what I should be doing? Should I just give up knowing that I now have the strength I didn't have 7 years ago to stand my ground without getting sucked into the bullshit? I just don't know what to do.

Absurdity or Advancement?

Is this outrageous or a stroke of genius? Ridiculous or a great vision by mankind?

Hotel opening in space in 2012

Woof!

HAHAHAHAHAA..why are the little devils so hilarious sometimes??

Am I going to get into trouble for this?

Watching Mel Gibson's 'Passion of the Christ', I suddenly thought of something, and I'm sure I'm not the first person..

Watching it, I was seeing how the people who crucified him viewed Jesus Christ. It's not that outrageous for them to have thought Jesus Christ was a bit of a nutter, really. After all, he was a carptenter's son who claimed to be the son of god, who claimed to perform miracles, who wanted to change the existing order into something quite different, in accordance with rules of conduct that he had come up with himself...

I thought to myself, let me look at this from both sides. Being a regular person from that time and era, I might've thought this man was a bit of a lunatic, though I probably wouldn't have thought he was dangerous and fit to be nailed to a cross, left to die. But I can see why they did that. He was a huge threat to their power, and in those days, that's how they punished people.

And from Jesus Christ's point of view, I would've felt very alone. Maybe he really did believe he was the son of God. Maybe it was a sort of madness. Or maybe it was a ploy he used to teach his beliefs and spread his word. Maybe he was just a regular good guy who used being the son of god to make people listen, and whose greatness lay in the fact that he wanted to change the bad things in the world. And maybe his disciples recognised that he was a wonderful, kind, gentle, self-less person with good intentions for the world, and loved him for it..and stuck with the whole "son of god" story because it seemed to be working in order to get to the people.

They say that history hints at the existence of people like Jesus Christ, Ram and Sita etc. If this is true, isn't it possible that they were just great people, like Gautham Buddha, or Gandhi. Not gods but simply great people. Maybe 2000 years from now, Gandhi will be considered a god, someone who "purified untouchables" when what he really did was try to give them a respectable status...I dont know if I'm making complete sense, but d'you know where I'm coming from?

Just a thought.

Twist, Random and Music

Life's a twisted tale of deception. In many ways.
It's like I m standing at a crossroad, watching people I know walk past.

How does one stand by the shore and watch silently as someone drowns?
Or worse, how does one look away when someone else is drowning someone you love?
And amazingly enough, how does one forcefully hold a loved one's head under water?
And how does one surivive it all?

Just things I've been thinking about. No, its got nothing to do with toto. Although, I got a start today when I saw someone walking on the street who I thought for a second looked exactly like Toto.
It was one of those insane moments of complete delusion and denial..It lasted just a second..a fleeting split second of..."Could it be..?" Heh. Obviously not.

I hate moments when you think back on the past few years and realise you might not ever be able to trust a friend again..and then you think of one person you can still trust..and that's supposed to make you feel better. It doesnt, you think. But then again, of course it does! Its a constant mind duel..I hate those! I'm constantly battling with my own two minds. Why can't they just be at peace with one another?

I think music is one of the most uplifting things in the world..listening to Bittersweet symphony on full volume made me feel more energised than I've felt in days. And it's just a song. And then I listened to Lazarus by Porcupine Tree, See you on the other side by good ol' Ozzy, and then some Spiritualized.. its a band Rich introduced me to. Quite a soul-seeping band, if you know what I mean.

Music really is a universal language. Along with movies and mathematics, that is. It's been around since the beginning of time, and it has the ability to move people - whether its moving them to tears, to laughter, to dance..whatever.

There's a song for every situation, every feeling, every outcry of anguish, every feeling of tranquility..
"Go find a place for your own shame" - Alice in Chains
"When the tears come streaming down your face, When you lose something you can't replace, When you love someone but it goes to waste, Could it be worse?" - Coldplay
"I survive against the will of my twisted folk" - Porcupine Tree
"The Street heats the urgency of sound, as you can see there's no one around" - Smashing Pumpkins
"Ain't no Sunshine when you're gone" - Bill Withers/Marvin Gaye/Buddy Guy/Tom Jones
"So you lost your trust, that you never should have" - Coldplay
"...that it only takes a minute of your precious time to turn around and I'll be two steps behind" - Def Leppard
"She wishes for wet, verdant grass..Meadows, where she used to lie imploring stars...So dismayed she's lost, yet elated 'cause he's gone, Her misty stolen eyes narrate the horror that once was" - Kryptos :)
"I know it's easier to walk away than look it in the eye, But I will raise a shelter to the sky and here beneath this star tonight I'll lie" - Dream Theater
"I'm the one for you, cos I know all the dirty things you like to do...I'm the fear in your eyes, I'm the fire in your flies, I'm the sound that's buzzing around your head.." - Third Eye Blind
"Reality held its breath too long...its disgusting what dreams can do" - Evergrey
"If the sun refused to shine, I would still be loving you..Mountains crumble to the sea, there will still be you and me" - Led Zeppelin
"No one dared...disturb the sound of silence" -Simon and Garfunkel
"I want to feel your flesh enrapture me" - Nevermore
"I'm in love for the first time, Don't you know it's gonna last, It's a love that lasts forever, It's a love that had no past" - The Beatles
"Your momma told you that you're not supposed to talk to strangers,Look in the mirror tell me do you think your life's in danger here, ya" - Ozzy Osbourne
"Outside the rain fell dark and slow, while I pondered on this dangerous but irresistable past time" - Pink Floyd
"I got a place where all my dreams are dead" - Porcupine Tree
"I hurt myself today, to see if I feel...I focus on the pain, the only thing that's real" - Johnny Cash
There's SO much more...and of course then there's also... "what goes around goes around goes around..."
CHEE.

Stooopid

Watching a youtube video sent to me about how women are airbrushed and distorted on advertisements to look "perfect", I started to think about how many people in the world wish they looked different in some way or another. And I began to wonder if this was merely a desire to change their appearance, or whether its a desperate and pathetic want to change what lies beneath the surface.Unless you're a model, i think beauty doesn't lie in the sharpness of the nose or the roundness of a breast so perhaps it is something internal that women all over the world change to supposedly increase their self-esteem.

I drifted onto thoughts about the world, and once again, to my view of it. My stupid naive view of the world. I think about the numerous times that I have watched the world and it's people, and marvelled at the superficiality and stupidity of it all. And the times that I have deliberately overlooked all that, foolishly and desperately convincing myself that there is something more to the world than all that. The times that I have forcefully driven cynicism out of my thoughts, and have been called naive. The endless times I have trusted people blindly and suffered because of it. The numerous occasions on which loved ones have let me down. Perhaps I am no different. Maybe I'm just as selfish and fucked up as them, and just can't see it because I'm me.

There was a time when I felt happy when I was called naive and innocent. At any cost, I would rather have been naive and happy, than cynical and bitter. Innocent and carefree, rather than shrewd and tangled up in the fuck ups of the world.

I'd remain happy in my little world. And that's all I cared for. Selfish, perhaps. I saw atrocities committed, and they upset me, but I strongly believed justice would triumph, sooner or later if not immediately. I tried to play my tiny role in the justice of it all. How naive even that is! I saw myself hurt again and again, but instead of giving up on the idea of friendship, I chose to see the light...another friend, somewhere else in the world who seemed to be different. Against my better judgement and the advice and warnings of people I know who look out for me, I trusted people too easily and too much.

What gave me that ardent faith in people and goodness, I don't know. But I stand here today, defeated in the face of cynicism and reality. Once again. It isn't the first time, or the second, or the third...it is the 100th time, maybe more. The hopeless thing is, I'm hopeless. I think I need help. How does one change everything they ever believed in? Hasn't enough happened in my life to naturally change it all? But why haven't I changed then?

I sit here, moaning and complaining. What a pain in the arse. Deep inside the depths of my soul or whatever, I know that no amount of complaining will help unless I choose to help myself. But then I'm faced with another dilemma..will transforming myself into a cynical, bitter and faithless person help me? Or drown the real me in this sea of superficiality and cynicism that the world demands of people today?

I'm constantly trying to find that equillibrium between what I have chosen to be or not to be, and what the world requires me to be in order for me to survive in it. I don't know if I should change because I don't know what will be left for me in this world if I have no hope of faith, trust and friendship in it...but if i do change, what will be left of ME?

Like I said, there was a time when being called naive and innocent made me smile. But a part of me wonders...am I mistaking naivete and innocence for stupidity? I've done this whole ridiculous self-reflection thing over and over again, and drawn the same conclusion...that either I need to change and adjust to the world, or I need to accept the consequences of being naive and innocent in a world where innocence is not a quality, its a curse. Or maybe I am not naive and innocent at all. Maybe I'm just dumb. A wise friend once said to my sister - there's a difference between being nice and being dumb.

I can no longer use innocence and naivete as an excuse for not seeing blatant signs staring me in the face. That's just stupid.

So I hereby claim to be, not naive and innocent...
.....but just plain old stooopid.

The End of an Era

My year at LIPA comes to an end today. It's been a year full of so many things. I learnt a lot, about dance, about living alone, about friendship and love, about competition and surviving in the performing arts industry.

I've learnt a whole range of western styles of dance..Martha Graham technique. Nikolai technique, imporvisation techniques, ballet, jazz, street dance and a little bit of tap dancing(although i'm not quite sure the tap amounted to 2 weeks worth of classes, so I won't count that as learning an art form, but rather learning the theoretical history behind tap dance, which not surprisingly is similar to kathak).

But what I take back with me from here that I will really really cherish and remember forever is not anything LIPA taught me, but what LIPA inadvertently brought into my pathway. The people in it. What never ceased to amaze me every single time I went out with my friends from LIPA was that at any given time there were people from different nationalities there. On the way back from the beach the other day, there were 7 of us, each from a different part of the world - Cataline from Argentina, Snorre from Norway, Nick from England, Graham from America, Richard from Ireland, Luis from Brazil, and me from India. There was so much to learn from all these people. Such tremendous cultural exchanges happened..Linda from Latvia taught me how to cook latvian couscous. Richard taught me Irish. Oh, and the way Richard and Luis proudly wore the kurtas I gave them..it was too sweet! I explained Indian classical music to them, we talked about the social and cultural problems in India at the same time as the situation of women in Egypt and the Magdalen laundries in Ireland which only completely closed down in 1980.

I learnt about how the dance cultures in India and the west are so different. In india, on the day of a show, you don't rehearse. infact, sometimes even on the day before a show, you rest. here, you're in from 9 in the morning for a show that starts at 7.30. In india, a week before the show, you just do 2 hour run throughs and go home and take a hot bath, here..you're still devising and changing things around till the last minute...loads of things like that.

I made really close friends in my dance class..three in particular..Becki Heath (Brown haired becki), Becky Smith (becky blue hair) and Georgia from Greece. They always encouraged me
when the unfamiliarity of the styles got the better of me. I love them dearly!

I also made friends outside my dance class..Richard and Luis, my two best friends and 'babies', Sibel and Nick..two very talented musicians and wonderful people..many many others..I won't be able to name them all..but people like Linda(Latvia), Ulysses(Switzerland), Nadya(Egypt), Josh (who's coming to India in August)...so many people. I have a friend in almost every part of the world now! I think that's amazing!

I'll also never forget the friends I made outside LIPA..my flatmates. Hannah, my twin who I share so much with (Led Zep, Movies, similar mishaps, Forrest Gump and family guy, intoxicated blabbering, COLDPLAY!), Emma who provided support at the most unexpected times (e.g. she cleaned my bloody foot when I couldn't reach it because of my knee injury), Mike who;s gay antics will be etched in my memory forever (I'll NEVER forget that catwalk in the living room!) and Rob, my partner in crime as far as alcohol consumption is concerned (don't be smothering youself to death by passing out on stale pizza again!)

Liverpool has been good to me. I'll miss it.