Saturday, December 17, 2011
Friday, December 16, 2011
multimedia
Suzanne Dellar Center, Tel-Aviv 2011
"Tillana"
"Kali kautvan"
"Varnum"
Back to main menu
The Red Color used in Bharatanatyam
The red color used in Bharatanatyam
By Miho Kataoka2007©
The god Shiva is depicted as an ascetic in the Hindu mythology. He has renounced the world. The ultimate goal of human being is to isolate oneself fromSamsara (the wheal of life) in the thought of Upanishad. But what will happen if all human renounced the world? This world would stop to functioning.
In Hindu myth, the god Vishnu (the god of Dharma, the order) make Shiva marry to Parvati. In order to maintain the world, we need not only Purusha (spirit, male) but Prakriti (nature, material, female).
The goddess Parvati who is a consort of Shiva decorated her with a lot of jewels and stained her hands and foot with henna in her wedding. Like this, at the Hindu weddings, women put henna.
At the Bharatanatyam recitals, we apply red-colored liquid called altha instead of henna. It presents that the dancer is an auspicious one who is a bride of the god. Besides that, henna cool down the heat. The color red symbolizes the passion, sexual intercourse, menstruation and birth. This is the color which symbolizes the woman. But the heat implies a destructive aspect so that it is indispensable to cool down. Therefore the bride applies henna.
Bharatanatyam dancers put on gold jewels. When I just started performing, I used to wonder why we need to put so many showy jewels. As we see a lot of gold shop in India
Bhakti
Bhakti
By Miho Kataoka2007©
One of the classical sanskrit epic of
One day, a boy called Ekalavya asked Drona to teach him archery but Drona rejected him. After that Ekalavya hermited in the forest and made Drona`s statue and worshipped it. He practiced archery alone and became a greater archer than Arjuna. Arjuna jearous at him and make remind to Drona his promise. Drona said to Ekalavya. " if you say that you are my deciple, give me your thumb." Then Ekalavya cut his finger without hesitation and gave to his guru, Drona. Ekalavya can not do archery like before. In such a crucial way, Drona carried out his promise to Arjuna.
What is this story telling?
Drona carried out his loyalty to his deciple despite his cruelty to Ekalavya. At the same time, he might admonish to Ekalavya something important by letting him to give up himself.
Ekalavya has given himself for training of archery and achieved to summit. Then he was told to give it up. Here, it is represented the Bhakti, a devotional act to reach to divine by casting your ego.
Bhagavad Gita(BC3-2 compiled) is a part of Mahabharata(chapter 6). It has a value as a highest sacred book for Hindu.
Arjuna has lost his fighting spirit when the war started between Kaurava clan and Pandava because of the same family. When Arjuna has puzzled what to do, Krishna inspired him and taught him to execute of his duty (SVADHARMA) as a ksatriya( caste of warriors and kings) which is to fight. Arjuna was afraid of his penalty to pay later by this fighting between the same clan. Then Krishna taught him that act itself should be the aim but not expect those results, that is, yoga of act. Human never stop acting, that`s why, it is required to do his own duty. This is the way to nirvana (isolation from all trouble). And taught that Atman (soul) never be vanished even your body died.
The Hindu divides the human life into 4 terms. At a boyhood, obliged to study Veda(The Hindu sacred book), at a youth, marry and have children and perform rituals as a householder and when you have a grandchildren, leave the house and live in the forest for meditation and ascetic. Then the last stage is a truth seeker by pilgrimage (Samnyasa).
The human is a creature becoming bolder and bolder with age and wear more and more, bear more burdens, but never satisfied. As long as we have a conscious of self, we never escape from suffer. If so, we would be able to be free from these suffering by transcending the self consciousness. If this is the way of Bhakti, the way of self-renunciation, Bharatanatyam is one of the means toward spiritual freedom.
Devadasi
Devadasi
According to Hindu tradition, we must follow to varnashramadharma which divide our stage of life into 4 to accomplish our duty. The time to study Veda, marry and perform rituals as a house holder, leave house to meditate, renounces the world to seek the truth. As you see the all gods have their consort, being single is considered as abnormal and not perfect as a man. If you are not married, you are unbalanced.
Then what will happen to devadasi, the temple dancers who dedicated herself to gods?
There existed girls who became saints because she chose to marry the god. She is not a single because she was considered as a wife of god. Sometimes parents gave their daughter to the temple for their virtue. She will never be a widow. She is an eternal bride of the god. That’s why, as an auspicious existence, the Devadasi not only worked in the temples to worship gods but danced for weddings such as social functions and life-cycle cerebrations of family. They were financially independent because the temples gave her a land and the rich Brahmin land-owners were patrons of devadasi. The rich patrons had several wives and were common to have courtesans. The devadasi was not allowed to marry so that they adopted children. If they were girls, they taught dances and their sons became musicians or dance teachers.
After the dedicated girls were accepted to the temple, they undergo several rituals. Gajjay puja is a ritual of ankle bells. Even in this present time, gajjai puja are performed when the Bharatanatyam dancer concluded her dance lessons and starts to perform in the public. (Called arrangetram) Another ritual is a marriage ritual. The devadasi gets a flower garland which the god had and put a necklace (Tali, with golden bottu) and put pottu (sandal paste) on her forehead.
Devadasi performed rituals and dances for gods. They were trained dancers as well as singer and besides, they studied Tamil, Telgu and Sanskrit languages.
When we visit the Hindu temple, we see the cradle. This is used for the night ritual to make the god sleep. And they close the door. And early in the morning, devadasi sang the songs to wake the god up and feed him.
Reference:
Gaston, Anne- Marie, Bhratanatyam from temple to theater
Good and Evil
Good and Evil
By Miho Kataoka2007©
Bharatanatyam is the dance of prayer which the dancer yearns for the god.
The heroine (Nayika) longs for the god to unite but suffer from the separation. The heroine often betrayed by the god and suffers. Then you think what in the world the god can betray and sometimes get angry like human beings?
There is a story of good and evil in SAURA PRANA (prana is a corpus of Sanskrit myth and legends).
The king Pratardana was living in his kingdom with perfect dharma (order) with grace which is well balanced because of his piousness to the god Shiva. After a while, the evils got tired of their Karma (religious concept of Hinduism and Buddhism, entire cycle of cause and effect. The effect of your deeds create your future situation.), succeeded to go up to the world of gods from hell by following to Veda (The Hindu sacred scripture) faithfully. All people lived in the heaven piously. Therefore, the Yama, the god of death has lost his role and the king of gods, Indra said, how can we distinguish gods from low people if all are living in the heaven together? Then Indra ordered to the father of gods, Brihaspati, to make heresy against Shiva worship. So that people will go to hell as a result of Shiva`s wrath. But any gods did not agree to this idea, therefore, Indra ordered to Centaur who has a body of horse. The people (Brahmins) of Pratardana were persuaded by Centaur and evil heart has sprout in their mind and started to argue among them. According to the law, the king Pratardana has to kill people (Brahmins) who slander the god Shiva. But on the other hand, he is not allowed to kill Brahmins according to the law. In the meanwhile, people who slandered the god Shiva have fallen to hell. The hell was filled with people again.
The goddess Rakshmi awoke Vishnu, the protector of good and the god of dharma (order), from deep sleep on Ananta (the thousand headed serpent). Vishnu saw the world is being destroyed. All the gods were at a loss and went to beg to Shiva. All the gods explained that all these deeds were done in order to protect the creation…
From this story, we see that the king of the god Indra, himself created the good and evil. The world of perfect dharma (order) is the world which is well balanced of good and evil. There is good because there is evil. These good and evil is relative but not absolute. They would change according to time, place and people.
According to his notion of Indian mythology, the world divided into 4 Yugas. (1 Kruta Yuga. 2Treta Yuga.3 Dwapara Yuga.4 Kali Yuga.) Yuga means age and this world repeat these 4 Yugas. The first Kruta Yuga is a golden age which perfect Dharma (order) exists. Then slowly the world falls and corrupts. Now, we are in Kali Yuga which the Dharma exist only 25% and loosing the balance of good and evil. This is a so-called eschatology of Hindu. As we see, Hindu thought see the world falls in a natural manner and repeat the cycle of creation and destruction.
Numinous
Numinous
By Miho Kataoka2007©
What brought me being into this Indian dance....It was the time when first I saw my teacher in
After many years, I came across the term “Numinous" of Rudolf Otto (1869-1937). He named “Numinous" to the experience which is "wholly other"- entirely different from anything we experience in ordinary life. It evokes a reaction of awe and terror to the overwhelming power but fascinates. Then when you face to this experience, you feel yourself as worthless.
C.G.Jung developed his theory of the collective unconscious and the archetypes. He was the one who was struck by the universality of many stories and images in myth. And he thought if you touch to the ARCHTYPE which exist in the collective unconscious, you will experience this “Numinous". Jung says this ARCHTYPE is universal and immemorial conscious which transcend the individual, time and space.
If so, that dance which I saw in my teacher`s dance might be the archetype of goddess Dulga. Like this I turn my thought toward ancient memory.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)