The Art of Dance
From the powerful drumbeats of Bhangra to the sacred tradition of Bharatnatyam, in India, dance is life
At 67, dancer Yamini Krishnamurthy can no longer do the deep pliés she used to do — her knees are too damaged from years of bending. Yet she still stands tall, shoulders back, head high, and chin slightly tucked, thanks to her decades of classical dance training. Krishnamurthy’s deep brown eyes are lined in the same heavy stage makeup she has worn for years, and they twinkle when she smiles and giggles, which is often. She still dances professionally on occasion and teaches classes to anyone who wants to learn. Every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, girls from age 3 on up visit the Yamini School of Dance in the trendy Hauz Khas area of Delhi. They come to the two-story building in a residential neighborhood across from Gulmohar Park to learn from one of the country’s most esteemed classical dancers. And this week, I’m joining them.
Full disclosure: I consider myself something of a dancer, although I quit taking ballet and tap classes at 12, as soon as I performed solo and received my five-year dancing trophy. As an adult, I took ballet again for about 10 years, and while in Madrid a while back, I learned how to flamenco dance. I took to flamenco like peanut butter to chocolate. I felt like a natural, standing there, not speaking a word of Spanish, as my teacher stamped her feet into the ground and I dutifully followed. I picked it up immediately, and before I left, bought a pair of shoes and a bagful of Paco de Lucia CDs. From that point on, whenever I traveled, I brought my flamenco music with me.
So I thought to myself, how hard could this be? But seeing my instructor as she stands beside me on the cold, concrete floor painted with large yellow flowers, I’m beginning to have doubts. Like me, she is barefoot, though her toes are thick and muscular from years of stamping hard, unforgiving floors. She wears a sapphire silk sari with gold trim, and her ink-black hair falls in thick waves almost to her waist. As is her custom, a long, double strand of jasmine flowers picked from her garden is woven into the back of her hair. When she moves, she leaves a trail of the sweet scent in her wake.
Dance teacher Yamini Krishnamurthy gives a lesson at her studio in Delhi; a stick and a desk provide the beat at Krishnamurthy's studio; Krishnamurthy's students practice their steps.
Krishnamurthy teaches Bharatnatyam, the oldest of India’s classical dance styles and the one on which all other classical dances are based. Bharatnatyam was originally a temple dance performed by devadasis, female dancers who expressed themselves through specific mudras, or gestures. Bharatnatyam dances are stories told through expressive movement and song, not unlike opera. Today, classical dance isn’t performed in temples, but on stage, and its influence is found in the films made in Bollywood, India’s vast movie industry, in borrowed moves and gestures that would no doubt shock the gods.
Bharatnatyam is one of seven styles of Indian classical dance (there are also thousands of regional folk dances). India is a country that loves to move — there are dances that are carefully choreographed and others that are improvisational; dances for weddings and for national festivals such as Holi, which celebrates the arrival of spring, and Ganesh Chaturthi, the birthday of the elephant-headed god of prosperity. There are dances for men and dances for women; most of them do not mix. On television, three music video channels — V, B4U music, and MTV India — present dance almost nonstop, broadcasting big, complicated production numbers with dozens of dancers performing stylized, synchronized routines. In between the programs, dancing sells everything from men’s hair gel to Treat, “the funky, fruity drink.”
Two members of a classical tribal dance group from the state of Assam.
“In India, dance is connected to the cycle of life,” says Leela Venkataraman, a dance critic. “When an important event takes place — a child is born, a death, or when there’s a festival — we dance. You name it — any occasion, you have a dance.”
During my brief sojourn in India, I’ll gain some familiarity with three styles: Bharatnatyam, the oldest; Bhangra, the wildly popular folk dance from Punjab; and Bollywood, a mix of Bharatnatyam, Bhangra, and just about anything else a choreographer wants to toss in.
“It’s Bollywood masala,” says Ganesh Acharya, likening the dance style to the mixture of spices found in Indian cooking. Acharya is a Bollywood dance choreographer with more than 75 films to his credit, including India’s entry for the 2007 Academy Awards, Rang De Basanti. “It can go salsa, it can go jazz, it can go Indian folk. It’s not one thing.”
While all the styles are different, if you look closely you’ll see similarities. Hips swivel. Faces are dramatically expressive. Hands come alive. The reason for the dramatic moves? Between 200 BC and AD 200, when the sage Bharata Muni is believed to have written the Natya Shastra, a treatise on dance, he outlined specific postures, facial expressions, and hand movements, all based on the nine rasas, or emotions — happiness, sorrow, anger, compassion, disgust, wonder, fear, serenity, and courage.
Acharya sums it up succinctly: “Dance is a part of Indian life.”
Krishnamurthy begins my Bharatnatyam instruction with the namaskar. Named after the traditional Hindu greeting, it’s a thumbs-up bow and deep plié that signifies the start of class. Next, she shows me the basic hand movements: one in which the fingers are spread and stiff, called “lotus”; and another, with the index fingers curled, the middle fingers pressed into the thumbs, and the other two fingers on each hand spread out like wings, called “bee.” Sounds simple. We move right to left, with my lotus hands at my chest, then step back to the left, for the bee. Lotus, bee, lotus, bee, I’m thinking, as Krishnamurthy moves along with me, counting aloud. “One two, one two,” she says in a sing-songy cadence and a heavy accent. Then we bring one arm in and keep one arm out, alternating arms and feet, and lotus to bee. Or is it bee to lotus? She adds more steps and more variations on the hands, but it’s pretty much bee to lotus and back again. “You’re doing well,” she says, smiling at me. I start to feel confident. It’s only two hand changes. After she shows me eight different combinations, she wants me to put them all together and perform for her. “Your hands must speak,” she says.
Sitting in front of me, behind a small, brown wooden table with the paint on top nearly gone, Krishnamurthy picks up what looks like a broken off broom handle and whacks the table to keep a beat. No more gentle “One, two, three, four.” I do the namaskar bow and begin. Whack, whack. Lotus, bee. Step to the right. Step to the left. Lotus, bee. Lotus, bee. Right, left, right, left. “Now, faster,” she says. Rat-tat-tat, rat-tat-tat. I try to remember what’s next. The three-step lotus-bee combination? My lotus hands won’t open. I’m concentrating on the hands as my bare feet are stamping the floor. Whack whack whack whack. Lotus, bee. Lotus, bee. My left foot gets a cramp! I have to stop. She looks annoyed. I want to learn? Then I must dance. She starts back up with the stick. I do my best. “Nice,” she says occasionally, when I’m in step with hands and feet. It goes on like this for more than an hour.
A groom’s family comes outside to dance a few hours before the wedding procession.
After class, we eat juicy yellow raisins and nuts and talk about dance. Krishnamurthy began dancing as a young girl in southern India and was greatly influenced by her father, a Sanskrit scholar and poet. Dance came to her naturally, as did singing (like many young Indian girls at the time, she received private singing lessons as a child), and Krishnamurthy sees both as extensions of her Hindu faith. “[Dance] is so based in our culture, our civilization, our way of life,” she says. “You can’t call it a skill. It has philosophy. It has poetry. It must come from the heart, from the soul.”
In her heyday, Krishnamurthy danced all over the world, before numerous politicians and heads of state. She was one of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s favorite dancers and performed for Queen Elizabeth, former president Richard Nixon and his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, and others.
Krishnamurthy was asked to dance in Bollywood many years ago, but she refused. “I’d be dancing around trees and making faces,” she says, laughing. She’s no fan of modern Bollywood, which, she says, mixes styles as it sees fit. “I don’t like it. Do something else, but don’t spoil a beautiful thing.”
Troupe members perform a classical Gowli dance.
Deepak Kumar Taank, 32, wants to go to Bollywood to be a dance choreographer, but right now, he’s struggling to make ends meet. He’s living with his mother in a three-room house in Mahavir Enclave, not far from the Indira Gandhi International Airport, teaching dance and putting on shows with his group, Indian Cyanides Dance Troupe, which bills itself as “the fastest dance troupe on earth.” Taank says that he’s part of the country’s Free Style dance movement, which is about as far from classical dance as you can get. Like many Bollywood dancers, he mixes numerous styles, along with yoga and acrobatics. “I don’t know what is ‘dance,’” he says. “I play rhythms and move my body.”
That might include hip-hop, jazz, or moves inspired by Taank’s idol, Michael Jackson, whose image is pasted onto a piece of cardboard leaning against his wall, along with a row of dust-covered plastic statues of Ganesh. Taank’s background is in the martial art Kallaripayattu, and he has studied the Mayurbhanj Chhau style of dance, along with Seraikella, a masked Indian folk dance with a Bharatnatyam base and soldier-like movements, and Purulia Chhau, another masked dance with a theme of good defeating evil.
A dance depicting child labor is performed in Delhi.
Taank’s athletic dancing style recently landed him in the semifinals on the television dance show Kaboom, and Hindustan Times ran an article about Taank’s dream of becoming the world’s fastest dancer, including a photograph of Taank doing a split, his hair hanging down past his shoulders.
“Dance is part of life for Indians,” he tells me, sitting on one of two sofas in the tiny parlor. His 72-year-old mother, wrapped in a vibrant aquamarine sari, rests on the other sofa while a ceiling fan whirs overhead. “Everyone wants to become a dancer.”
In the ballroom of the Hyatt Regency Delhi on a Sunday afternoon, 10 staff members led by Sarbjit Singh and Garvinder Singh Virk, both chefs at the hotel, are rehearsing a dance routine. Some staffers have come in on their day off; Singh and Virk are on a break. Dressed in crisp white chef coats, black pants, black shoes with rubber soles, and black turbans, Singh and Virk are leading the group members as they practice a Bhangra-style routine that they’ll perform for the hotel executives in honor of Diwali, a major holiday in India. Singh and Virk are natives of India’s Punjab state, northwest of Delhi, along the Pakistan border, where the Bhangra style developed. For hours, they practice to the simple, rhythmic, sounds of the dhol, a barrel-like drum made from a hollowed-out mango tree and played on its side on both ends, for bass and treble sounds, with one reed-thin bamboo stick and one L-shaped stick.
For most of the afternoon, I watch the five men and five women practice their dance, sometimes moving harmoniously as a group, and other times in pairs, dancing to the stage’s edge, and then back again. The women shake their hips vigorously as their fingers snap at waist level, and wave overhead in sync with the drumbeat, so powerful it can be heard two floors above. The men join the women, with animated, wide-eyed expressions and toothy smiles, index fingers and thumbs extended high into the air. To me, it looks a bit Saturday Night Fever, but these are typical moves in a Punjabi dance.
A dance from Chhattisgarh is performed in Delhi.
“It’s the only pure dance,” says Virk, 22, who’s almost as thin as the bamboo stick that’s keeping the beat. “Being a Punjabi, it’s part of my culture. It’s in my blood.” He tells me that the Bhangra dance style began many years ago as a way to celebrate the annual harvest in Punjab, known for its abundant wheat fields. The dance, in fact, was started by the men in the fields and continues today wherever and whenever the mood strikes. “Dancing is not something that we need to look for a reason to do,” Virk says. “Whenever I’m together with my friends, we dance. India wins the cricket match? So we dance.”
Even non-Punjabis love the Bhangra beat. Bhangra dance contests take place around the world, and many U.S. universities have competitive Bhangra dancing teams. Bhangra rap is one of the most popular types of music in India, and many Bollywood moves are Bhangra-based.
One reason the country is so wild about Bhangra in all its forms may be its simple, infectious beat. “When you start Bhangra, your hands are in the air,” says Singh, who demonstrates by pointing his index fingers to the sky. He tells me that he learned Bhangra as a child from his father and grandfather, and smiles at the memory. “When you’re happy, you put your hands in the air.”
At 3 p.m. on Diwali, I’m back at the Yamini School of Dance for another lesson. With me is one of Krishnamurthy’s top students, 18-year-old Mrinalini Biswas, who has been dancing since she was 3 years old and plans to become a professional dancer. Biswas is strikingly beautiful, with long, shiny black hair that’s pulled back, and intense almond-shaped eyes. She wears a white kurta and pants and speaks like she dances, in sharp, staccato bursts. “Dance gives me everything,” she says. “Passion, fascination, love. Everything.”
Near the entrance of Krishnamurthy’s studio is a shrine to the Hindu gods, many of them covered in ropes of pink, yellow, and white flowers. In addition to Ganesh, there’s Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge and the creative arts; Lakshmi, the goddess of good fortune; and Shiva, the destroyer of the world, also known as Nataraj, the King of Dance. I stop and pay my respects. I figure it can’t hurt.
Krishnamurthy summons us to the studio and picks up the stick. Biswas stands beside me and demonstrates the steps, many of the same ones that I tried to learn three days before. Since then, I’ve been practicing the lotus-bee hands in my hotel room and in cab rides all over town.
Together, we begin. The stick whacks. I move to the right, then to the left, my hands in lotus, then overhead in bee. Then, the next combination. And the one after that. The lotus and bee come easily with the steps today, and I’m moving in time with the beat. Instead of the frustration I felt the other day, I’m feeling more confident. I’m having fun. She whacks. I move. Over and over it goes like this, effortlessly now. We dance for nearly an hour.
Krishnamurthy smiles. “Very good,” she says, putting her stick down to signal the end of today’s class. I’m not ready for the stage yet and probably will never land a role in a Bollywood film. But right now, at this moment, I’m a dancer.
— Ellise Pierce
Getting There: Continental Airlines offers daily nonstop service to Delhi from its hub in New York/Newark.
For Your Ears Only
Don’t wait to be invited to an Indian wedding party. You can dance to Bhangra, Hindipop, or Bollywood, in your own living room. Or office. Don’t speak Hindi? It doesn’t matter. Your feet — and your hands — will feel the beat.
Tune in to Indian music online at dishant.com, and check out these CDs, available at Amazon.com:
Hindipop:
Aap Kaa Surroor — Himesh Reshammiya
Kailasa — Kailash Kher
Bhangra rap:
Collaborations — Sukshinder Shinda
Bhangra Fever — various artists
Bollywood film music:
Rang de Basanti — Original soundtrack (film directed by Rakesh Omprakash Mehra)
Best of Bollywood — various artists
— E.P.
When the Music Stops
Eventually you’ll need to take a break. Here are three places to rest your feet.
Hyatt Regency Delhi. Located on the southern edge of Delhi, the Hyatt Regency offers a quiet respite from the chaos of the city with several restaurants and cozy, contemporary rooms featuring warm wood floors, granite bathrooms, and crisp white bed linens. Bhikaiji Cama Place, Ring Road, 91.11.2679.1234, delhi.hyatt.com
The Oberoi. Overlooking the Delhi Golf Club and the site of Humayun’s tomb, the Oberoi is set in a sea of lush green space not far from the shopping and commercial areas. Rooms are Indian inspired, with silk curtains and timeless design. Dr. Zakir Hussain Marg, 91.11.2436.3030, oberoihotels.com
The Taj Mahal Hotel. Located in the posh residential district Lutyens’ Delhi, near Connaught Place in the city center, the Taj Mahal offers luxe rooms, a health club, and an ayurveda center. And if you need some extra guidance, an astrologer is on call. 1 Mansingh Road, 91.11.2302.6162, tajhotels.com
— E.P.
