Tag: performance

This article was written on 14th April, 2014 after the mesmerizing SPIC MACAY event hosted at Miranda House, University of Delhi.

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The fingers ran, the breath ran out..Lips pressed tight onto the hard metal tube. The hands clutched the sticks hard and struck with a boom on the tight skin of the drum. 

A perfect extravaganza of strength of a man’s muscles, an economic use of the air in the lungs, and the perfect way to touch the tight strings, as if running across the smooth skin of a feminine froth. That was the perfect three combo of musicians.
         The lights shone bright on their faces, sweat on cheeks and forehead sparkled. The odor of the sweat mingled with the arrogance of the stinking brass-the saxophone, the fragrance of the dry wood-the flute, the pungent fuzzy smell of the empty drum and the sultry audience, even on a spring morning. A jazz performance, by Arild Anderson, Tommy Smith and Paolo Vinaccia.

          Now was the time to head for a bash of the drum, the strains on the strings , the blow on the saxophone. The audience waited, few held their breath back, few didn’t care, few fidgety with the ‘Golden Trash Technology’ called ‘Mobile Phones’, and few engrossed in gossiping. And then, awestruck, the hall gave out a werewolf bay- ‘AWWOOOOOOOOO’..’AWWOOOOOOOO’, followed by the perfect succession of the air-pipe, which ushered upon the hall a scene of the forest. Music and picture seemed to blend at a precise junction. And then the strings gave out their buzz and suddenly a hard brush sprang across the plate- a stick struck another and that was from Paolo Vinaccia at the drums- a man, knowledgeable enough how to use the power of muscles on the hard drums that lay before him. They played ‘The Dream Horse’.
The music galloped all through..a wild white horse let free through the woods, showing in every move, the strength, power, the endurance, the virility, and the sexual prowess.
It was a day. It really was a day. Anxiety, put aside, peace entangled all worries.

To live in the midst of hills and open your eyes in the morning to hills, makes you inexplicably poetic and drives the poet in you to fall for everything you see around you. Here I am, a wretched soul with an explicit excitement bubbling every now and then in me to vent out a little more of the charm I feel all around, to radiate the positive vibe I gather all throughout the day. A day has no better destiny than to end with an art. 7^th of August  2015 was such a day.

Dance is an explicit way of expression where, if the language not known, you seem to be a part of an unknown abstract world of fancy moves and grace.

The lights were switched off. There rose in my spine a rigid yet light bubble of excitement, by the sheer touch of skin on my skin. I realized it was my right palm resting upon my left. Such was the silence in the auditorium and the spell of the moment where the consciousness had no control over the actions of my limbs. A huge yellow light lit up the middle of the stage and a raga was played behind. And then she entered with all her grace lighting up the stage even more.

A yellow sari, bordered in red with a red bindi burning in the middle of her forehead. Her hair tied into a bun embroidered with flowers, orange and white. Her feet and palms made even more delicate with the tinge of red alta on the tips. And she flew into the stage with all her charm posing for her composition. And then flew the music, and she with the tune. And then she stopped with her mudra for a while and then with a shy swirl, she flew again. She was an angel dropped from heaven. She was the messenger of God, sent to mesmerize the mortals on the planet with her charm. Life is all we complain about always. But when life gives you all the reasons to appreciate, you suddenly realize how wrong you have been forever. When life makes you fall for the sheer existence of your being, you realize how beautiful and opportune your birth as a mortal was. Chance is all we live for. And here was my chance to live for the night.

She went on to explain the details of the Odissi dance form. How it originates from the state of Orissa and unlike Bharatnatyam, where we see stretches dominating the other moves, this form of dance has more of circular forms of movement. How some compositions are merely abstract and how the rest form a story, or depict another composition. She went further on , reciting and enacting one of Kalidasa’s compositions and another  that spoke of the first meet of Radha and Krishna, where Radha fell in love with him at his first sight. Radha’s sakhi teased Radha for the immense courage to fall in love with even the idea of Krishna.

Her depictions spoke. Her gestures connected every broken string of a lore. Her story telling was nothing but art.

She concluded with the depiction of the war of the inner self with the outer actions of a being. The music around, the call for wilderness, the call of nature inevitably makes you rise, run for braking the shackles. But the inner mind knows. The society , the expectations , the rules, entangle every bit of your being and forces you to stop being who you are. We know our capabilities, our skills. But the extravaganza of the skills remains shackled within us. The world never gets the hint of it. Until one day, when we gather the courage to break those walls and plunge into the ocean of life. And then the world knows who we are, what we hold within, what power we suppress, what energy comprises us.Grace is beauty. But grace without belief can never speak a language. She has built a language of her own, through her skill. She has spoken successfully. She has connected to the masses successfully. Mesmerized by her grace and her beauty and her skill, here runs my lore…

It is not her curves,

It is the smile she wears.

It is not her hip-long hair,

It is the way she combs it.

It is not her breasts,

It is her eyes which welcomes you to her soul

It is the caring she cares to give

The passion that she can roll.

— My tribute to all lovers of art,
                        I pay my gratitude.