Friday 11 September 2015

TRENDING by Ashish Mohan Khokar - New Natya Shastra

Natya Shastra must be the most used and abused word today. Wherever I go, Pune or Paris, Baroda or Bolivia, this is one random word thrown by those who wish to impress their bookish, inapplicable knowledge of Indian dance. It is another matter when I ask some obese dancer or guru what NS has to say about age and weight of a dancer fit for stage or what dimensions stage ought to be, then they look blank or have excuses that it was WRITTEN eons ago and not applicable in its entirety today! Some silly teachers have drilled NS so much into ears and brains of poor unsuspecting students that most students are lost today and are feeling dance art is too heavy and redundant. Imagine, even modern dancers are suffering from this overdose of NS. One beauty from Bombay asked me, “Sir, how to use NS in modern dance by Bombay beach?" (as though its content and concepts of purvarangam or rasa theory would be used differently in mountains of Almora or sands of Jodhpur!).

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