“Run! Run faster and you will get there quicker!”, is all we hear and do in our lives. We are continuously surrounded by the demand to manage regardless of how. On the different finish of the spectrum, our historical practices educate us to be nonetheless.
Yoga and classical dance are each indigenous traditions of India that search the similar aim — to pay attention to the breath and let the praana information each motion. To interact each the body and the mind to behave without delay for a holistic expertise. The historical practices recommend that we pause to interact deeply with life, and compassionately with ourselves.
Yoga allows the mind-body steadiness that assist us make higher decisions for dwelling.
Dancers are complicated motion artistes. They should be contortionists, martial artists, poets, story tellers and sculptors all of sudden. They don’t simply convey an thought to life after they dance however create life itself in every second. As a dancer, my body modifications each second to stick to a complexly shifting mind. From the slightest quiver of a lip and the fleeting angle of the eye to the mild tremble of a finger, all come collectively to specific a single nuanced emotion.
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For dancers, body is a dwelling instrument
| Photo Credit:
Karthik Venkatraman
For a dancer, the body is a dwelling instrument. If my body should go to locations that my mind seeks in its creativeness, I need to prepare to stretch its potential in order that I could inhabit these boundless worlds. Thus when the body, mind and spirit come collectively, we have now reached our aim.
Martha Graham, the nice up to date dancer and choreographer stated, “I am a dancer. I believe we learn by practice. Whether it means to learn dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living”.
In the pursuit of excellence, for the previous 35 years that I’ve lived the lifetime of a dancer at Nrityagram, yoga and other forms of cross-training has been built-in into our day by day schedule. For years now, we have now studied and developed body kinetics that mix completely different views of coaching to particularly nourish and inform the Odissi body. In my preliminary years as a scholar, I discovered a lacuna in the utility of yoga apply to the strains of alignment inside which the Odissi dancer should operate. Most practitioners of yoga might not be dancers or essentially perceive the forces appearing on a dancer’s body. I felt this to be the central motive for the accidents I confronted as a dancer. I subsequently tried to know on my very own via analysis and research methods to heal myself and to make sure that none who skilled with me would endure the similar injury. Choosing selectively from completely different types of body work, we created a curriculum that might improve our potential as performers.
Dancers throughout yoga periods at Nrityagram.
| Photo Credit:
Courtesy: Nrityagram
At Nrityagram, the dancers start their day with a stroll or run, then clear the gurukul areas, adopted by body conditioning workout routines. Each day is a distinct mannequin that should reply to the body’s want for that specific day. In order to try this, the dancers should first put together their mind in order that it assimilates the body’s wants making certain the proper alternative of workout routines to higher their apply for that day. Each bone and muscle should be oxygenated and lubricated to sufficiently ship at the highest degree. Once this preparation is full, an additional warm-up is completed at school earlier than the rigour of complicated dance vocabulary is undertaken. After many hours on the dance ground, we enable the body time to de-stress with stretches which might be fitted to every dancer to get well as rapidly as doable.
Nrityagram has been at the very forefront of building the concept that the longevity of a dance profession relies upon on the sufficient safety and respect we should give to and have for our our bodies. Both choreographically and as performers, we have now pushed our skills to render new dimensions of talent in the classical dance world. This, in flip, has impressed artistes to discover new and extra environment friendly methods of working each in Odissi and different dance kinds.
Yoga and dance collectively can assist obtain each yogic stillness and a versatile body.
| Photo Credit:
Courtesy: Nrityagram
Dance traditions in India have been handed down via generations of artistes. As we stare upon the dancing figures on temple partitions, we search what they’ve — each yogic stillness and versatile body. Yoga and dance collectively can assist us obtain this.
Though AI and bots have entered the human area and threaten to do all that we are able to, it can’t for now categorical what the dancer’s body can. Until then, allow us to proceed to nourish this extraordinary instrument known as the human body via yoga and dance.
Published – June 19, 2025 06:21 pm IST
