Indian Dance
The starting point of today’s class was mudra’s. A mudra is “any of various similar gestures used in India’s classical dancing to represent specific feelings” (Dictionary.com, 2014). The first mudra studied was the isolations of the eyebrows performed in four speeds.
This mudra felt the most natural and the easiest of all the mudra’s and I noticed that an upward focus helped me to perform this mudra.
The second mudra we focused on was the bottom eyelid mudra and this was performed in three speeds. I personally liked this mudra also even though the rest of the class really disliked it but I still found isolating the bottom eye lid pretty simple although I discovered that I was twitching my nose at the same time as my bottom eyelids therefore this was not a complete isolation. In order to refrain from twitching my nose at the same time i slowed down the mudra and really concentrated on the isolation before speeding it up. The third mudra was the frowny lip, also performed in three speeds. In order to complete this mudra correctly it was essential to make sure the lips do not pout they simply pull down the bottom lip into a frowning position. This movement initiated from a pouting movement and felt comical to perform. These mudra’s were then applied through mudra emotion to mudra sentences. The first sentence was ‘I request some food’. To these mudra sentences we had to apply ‘real sad emotion’ I found this very difficult to be sad when I actually wasn’t feeling sad deep down. I discovered that this emotion was shown strongly through the eyes. The mudra sentences have to come from the stomach within a deep sensation to get the full effect and meaning.
The indian name for our dance is Bharatanatyam and the Indian word for the fast dance in which we perform is a Nattadavu. We had dance phrases of 8 stages and 2 speeds for each phrase all linked into one big dance piece for the assessment. Whilst performing this sequence our hand had to be in the position (mudra) called tri-pataka.
I really enjoyed performing this sequence including a wide range of Indian dance movement. The phrase starts really simple however it builds up to one completed long phrase. The phrase includes lots of stamps and mudra’s of the hands. The movement is initiated from a very important posture, which is the completely “stereotypically” incorrect in terms of contemporary dance and somatic posture. This posture disconnected my head and tail because we had to arch our backs, which disturbs the connection sticking out the chest and bottom. My aim for the next practice was to find the connection between my head and tail and hands and feet with the correct Indian dance posture. I noticed that my body was confused in this posture, as it’s not the posture that has been drilled into my body for the last two years. This resulted in strong back pain after the class. The Nattadavu movements reached directly into the space making me feel the first sighs of core distal connections which i planned to make stronger in the next class. I could particularly feel no connection when there was a fast plié in the sequence, I really tried to lengthen from my tail and reach out of my skull to make me feel height within my body but i still could not find a connection in this part of the routine as i was definately leaning too far forwards. There is a video showing the movements of the nattadavu which i found very helpful in learning the correct postures for my steps, this video also helped me with the timing and the indian namings of the phrases. (Youtube, 2013)
Bibliography:
Natyakriya (2013) Nattadavu Steps 1, 2. [online] Available from http://www.natyakriya.com/2013/09/nattadavu-steps-1-2-bharatanatyam-adavu.html [Accessed 17 March 2014].
Dictionary.com, (2014) mudra. [online] Available from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/mudra [Accessed 13 March 2014].
Youtube (2013) Nattadavu Steps 1&2. [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3jjc4hQ-lg [Accesed 17 March 2014].