Rhythm of Grace & Grit

In Dance of Freedom, Leela Samson passionately traces Bharatanatyam's journey from sacred temples to global stages, celebrating its resilience and inclusivity. Excerpts:

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Whether it is dance or music or any other pursuit, is it not primarily about one's sensibility, sensitivity, and education—what in India we call our sanskara? George Arundale, a theosophist and disciple of Annie Besant, said: "We educate the mind, after a fashion, at the expense of the physical body, which is bad enough, but far worse is our almost total neglect of the feelings, desires, the emotions—of infinitely greater importance these than the mind, though equal in importance to the physical body. We acknowledge the science of mathematics, of chemistry, of physics, of geology, of astronomy. We acknowledge the sciences of geography, of literature, of history, of music, of painting, of craftsmanship. But in the comparatively unevolved state of education there is no place for the science of emotions so rightly stressed in ancient Indian education. This science is a field in itself, and all we have to show for it is a psychology which avoids all that is of vital importance in the constitution of the individual life we are supposed to be educating."

The fact that our education and now, alas, our arts are for performance, for competition, the fact that they exalt the mind at the expense of all other states of consciousness, stimulating pride in superiority, leads to a grinding demand for unrighteous pre-eminence by the performer, the competitor. These cravings represent a lower aspect of human feeling as compared to one's aspirations, that represent a higher aspect. What may be called the 'body of emotions' is at the core of our being, upon which the intellectual mind and the physical body depend.