Rasa
By Miho Kataoka2007©
Rasa literary means essence or flavor in Indian art, it means emotional feeling felt by spectator who sees a performance.
Rasa derives from Bhava. The artists must create the emotion by using their own imagination and evoke Bhava - the state of mind of acting. For example, Heroine suffers from her separation with her lover when she sees the moon because the moon reminds him……like this, Bhava is the state of mind of each actors.
There are 9 Rasa (Navarasa)
1, Love(Shringara) 2, Humor(Hasya) 3, Fury(Raudra) 4, Sympathy(Karuna) 5,Hero(Vira) 6, Amazement, wonder( Adbhuta) 7,Disgust(Bibhatsa) 8,Fear( Bhayanaka) 9, Peace(Shanta)
The essence of Bharatanatyam[1] is to evoke the Rasa（ANANDATMAN, Bliss of soul）to spectators when dancers act. This Rasa has a role of catharsis in art, that is to say, the Rasa has a role to purify the spirits.
Ancient Indians thought that the world repeats the creation and destruction. Then they divided the cycle of the world into 4 ages (Yuga). Krita Yuga was the well balanced, harmonized age but this modern age is called Kali Yuga which is corrupted and filled with desire, jealous, anger and ego. The gods asked the redemption to the god Brahma (The god of creation) when they see the world was filled with human`s sorrow. Then the fifth Veda [2]
The Natya veda was born to enhance the spirit of artists as well as the spectators and to release the suffer of human being.
The dancer acts the role of gods and goddesses of myth. What does this mean? - -The scholar of religions, Mirche Eliade said that we live the time of sacred and profane. If the time which never comes back is the time of profane, the religious rituals and festivals are the time of sacred. For example, we, Japanese tries to start the New Year after we look back the year before in the New Year’s Eve. Together with this, we do the varieties of New Year’s rituals. The sacred time of New Year is repeated again and again, the eternal cycle. Same as this, the creation of the world in Judaism, the god creates the world in 6days and decided the 7th day as the rest time; the Jews keep the 7th day of the week as a rest time and prohibited to use fire and electricity. Then they restart the Sunday as a new. By imitation of archetype of the sacred gods, we, the secular ones try to escape from the fear of death or from the limited life, then assimilate and connect ourselves with sacred.
The act which plays the role of gods in the dance is an act to renounce the ego, a self-conscious of “me” which cause us anger and jealous. Therefore the time of the dance is a sacred time for dancer as well as spectators.
[1]Bharatanatyam is one of the classical dance styles of India
[2] The Vedas are the primary sacred texts of Hinduism. Veda means knowledge. There is four Vedas. The Rig-Veda, songs of praise was composed in 1500BC. The Sama-Veda contains the melodies or music for the chants used from the Rig Veda for the sacrifices. The Yajur-Veda is about rituals. The Atharva-Veda contains magical spells and incantations.
