DANCE FESTIVAL

Although the annual December music festival in Chennai has come to a conclusion, in the first two weeks of January, there is a dance festival at the Music Academy Madras. Last night, I attended a traditional dance performance. While I respect the tremendous level of discipline it takes to perform South India dances, to be completely honest, dance does not do it for me.

Of course, in South India, dance without music is like a Q without a U. The music ensemble included a vocalist, violinist, flutist and a mridangam player. Most of my attention was focused on the musicians; after attending so many music performances last week, I have been able to differentiate between a “good” musician and an “excellent” one. (Being invited to perform at the Music Academy Madras is a privilege reserved for South India’s finest musicians; thus, every show is guaranteed to be enjoyable). Tonight’s musicians were very good; I really appreciated the fact that they had to cater their performance to the dancer. To clarify, the music must be synchronized with the dance; and, due to the length of the performances, it is quite impressive to see such consistent and precise coordination.

Not surprisingly, on the right-hand side of the stage, there was a large statue of Shiva in his famous dancing pose, which is referred to as Nataraja, Lord of Dance. The statue was garlanded with flowers; there also were several candles surrounding the statue.

It is so strange to conduct research on “religious studies” in India: surely, there is not a shortage of information, but because “religion” is so embedded in the culture, it is difficult to separate “religion” from any part of the daily life. In fact, it is interesting to note that prior to the introduction of English to the Subcontinent, throughout the various Indian languages (Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, Urdu, et cetera…there are twenty-two official languages today), the word “religion” did not exist. So something like placing a dancing deity on the stage to inspire the performer is not necessary an act of “religious” ritual, but instead, it just is. There does not need to be an academic explanation of why the statue would be there, because it is there because it is there – and that is that. Perhaps my biggest qualm with Western academia is the desire to label and justify everything. So, in short, the statue was on the stage, because…well…just because.