Indian dancing

INDIAN DANCING

Dance Trophy, many years ago. Her name must go down as the first Indian woman of breeding to blaze the trail for society women to follow into the realms of classical art.

Probably the finest female exponent of Bharata Natyam to-day is Bala Saraswati, still in her twenties. She is no light, slim fawn, but a healthy, buxom South Indian girl born of a family of professional dancing girls. Though of the present generation, she has acquired absolute mastery of the old technique.

Bala’s greatest skill lies in her abhinaya. Her rasas and bhavas are well-nigh perfect. There is so much gtace in her movements, so much verve in her facial expressions, that her wonderful skill transcends her physical limitations and all who watch her ate bewitched by her att.

There is, after all, something to be said for the artistic ideals which were responsible for the old custom of dedicating women like Bala to the service of the temple gods. It should be remembered that though devadasi came to mean ‘a bad woman’, the term had originally meant “servant of god’. The devadas7, from the time of the arangetral, or dance initiation, is taken in hand by het zattwan, or teacher, and often so strong a bond binds the two that it remains a life-long partnership. From such stock Bala sprang. The name of her family has been highly honoured for generations; her gtrandmother, Veena Dhanam, was a musician of renown, while the latter’s own grandmother was, like Bala, a great dancer.

Rukmini Devi had a very different upbringing. Born of a family of Brahmans, she came, as a young girl, under the influence of Annie Besant the Theosophist. In her, as in Menaka, there was a strong streak of the rebel, for she married the late Dr Arundale, an English Theosophist, at a time when such intermarriages were frowned upon.

Rukmini has great personal magnetism and she performed Bharata Natyam with nimbleness and grace. The serene beauty of her face made her rasas a joy to see. She has not the same lightness of movement as in her earlier days but she will always be remembered for her pioneering efforts to further the artistic emancipation of her sex, and for the Kalakshetra, her cultural centre in Adiar.

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