10/05/2022
FROM OUR APRIL ISSUE
by Mythili Zatakia
I was not born to dance.
Maybe I was born to move. And remain in motion, even when stopping made more sense.
That loss of sense and self is primarily why we dance.
And so it is in dance that the chaos of my restlessness found cause, structure, and purpose.
My family sensed this restlessness long before I held onto a barre to steady myself or managed to hold my torso straight in Tatta Adavu (the first combination of fundamentals in Bharata Natyam).
When I was led to do both, the disquiet began to make way for the purest, most permanent love I have ever experienced in my life—dance. Particularly classical dance, because there are few artistic forms as disciplinary, definitive, and sublime.
It did not begin with love. It began with anguish and tantrums and tears streaming down my cheeks days before a weekly class. I simply didn’t want to go, I didn’t want to be told how to sit and stand and balance and control, I didn’t want to hold my arms a certain way, and most of all, I didn’t understand why a little girl had to obey so many instructions all at once!
Bharata Natyam came first, or rather, I was talked and walked into this particular classical art form first.
Originally from the Southern part of my country, Bharata Natyam is an exquisite and spry art form that communicates thought, feeling and story through intricate footwork, meaningful gestures of the limbs, facial expressions, and expansive movement.
For all the right reasons, my mother, reinforced by my aunt in the States, thought this was the classical dance I should begin with. Only years after I was the six-year- old thrown into a ring of rehearsals and precision and technique and posture and poise did it occur to me that this was their attempt at redeeming a disappearing awareness of India’s artistic heritage.
⚡️sign up for free at Dancegeist.com to receive the full issue now!⚡️
pic 1: Kevin Lobo
pic 2: Natasha Samant
