Indian dancing

INDIAN DANCING

society by its treatment of the artist moulds him for better or for wotse. The cultural expression of a period is bound up with its social structure, and posterity, when it judges the dead artist’s accomplishments, will thereby judge his age.

Why do mythological themes dominate the dancing stage of India? Because the dancer, baffled by this chaotic age that only half owns him, seeks to escape into the distant past and to create a dream world where respect and respite are his. This is what has led Indian dancing into a blind alley, causing it to conform to hide-bound tradition, killing the creative urge on which alone progress can depend.

Tradition is a wonderful thing, but we must use it as the central theme round which new patterns may be woven. Even Bharata Natyam, though rigid in technique, can be explored and adapted to modern trends. In art as in life revolution is a painful process, but one absolutely necessary to growth.

How then can art find its proper place in life? Where dancing is concetned, while we must not forsake our prayer through the dance, we must bring dancing into synthesis with life. There must be a concordance of the arts and crafts, and humanity’s struggles, its feats, hopes, and joys must be reflected in modern dancing as well as the passivity and serenity of godly beings. This is where Shankar’s ballet, Labour Versus Machinery, setves a useful purpose, touching a facet of modern life, tackling one of its problems, highly colouted though the solution offered may be, due to the creator’s own vivid imaginativeness.

The dancer must leave his temple shrine and join in the stream of life. His must be the finger pointing the distant vision, linking the physical and the metaphysical, expressing the half articulate longings of the soul.

STATE SUPPORT While the dancer and his fellow artists must work to free art of the fetters that bind it, the State should also play its part in helping art to find its proper place in life. Every social structure is the handiwork of a particular régime, so problems of national importance

IIO