Seminar bridges tradition, dance, guru's wisdom

It was no stereotype, remembering a guru, on his 107th birth anniversarya par excellence scholar and a great champion of Manipuri Dance.

- TAPATI CHOWDHURIE

In conducting the seminar, the present Artistic Director of Manipuri Nartanalaya, Bimbavati Devi, exhibited her accomplishments as a complete artist.

Manipuri Nartanalaya, where all roads end for the pursuit of aesthetic exploration of the gem of a form, celebrated Guru Bipin Singh’s life with a difference.

Conventions were broken, and a seminar was held in ICCR to go deep into the shastras and Shastriya dances.

The relation of the Shastras with art has an unbroken bondage; whether it hampers an individual's creativity was a question that came in for scrutiny at the seminar.

Vandana Alase, a dancer and a visiting Faculty of Presidency University, spoke of ‘Dance in the search for a shastra' and questioned the basics of the purpose of Dancewas it to be acknowledged by the dictates of a tradition, or was it rather an appeal to the tradition to recognise the emerging trends in form and content. In other words, was dance accommodating a shastra, or was it for the shastras to accommodate living forms?

Referring to the history of Bharatanatyam, she looked at the circumstances under which the Natya Shastra became a vital text in the reconstruction of an existing local Tamil tradition.

Vandana argued that when the dancer dances what she/he does not believe in, even if perfectly rendered, merely to be accepted by tradition, the dance is bound to be performed as a display of physical abilitynothing more.