It was unlike anything I had ever experienced. It is always so when one attends a performance in Kalakshetra. It just lifts you off the ground and sets you on another plane, in which you are in touch with another reality.
Iam talking of Dr. C.V.Chandrashekhar's dance on the birth anniversary of Rukmini Arundale at he Kalakshetra Rukmini Arangam.
This was dance in its purest form, and it helped that the dancer was in very good shape, and was also very striking to look at. What was incredible is his age. All of seventy five years, and he moved with the grace, agility and energy of a man twenty years younger.
The epiphany was to me a real life experience of Coomaraswamy's "Transformation of Art in Nature." The dance was not a "performance"; it seemed to be just an organic extension of the music.
This is not a report on the dance, but a note on how the dance affected me, and the connections that it lead me to form. I understood,sitting there in the darkened auditorium, that all theories of aesthetics were only attempts to capture and set in some sort of order the emotions that raced through one when confronted with beauty that cannot be quantified. So we struggle to weave a pattern with words to try and convey this blinding revelation of another reality. Aristotle put the feeling down as "katharsis", which very crudely put, is a purging of emotions leaving one "calm of mind, all passion spent". He almost sounds like a physician.
I do believe it is that and much, much more, a "kathahrsis " yes, but leading up to an epiphanic revelation where one is able let go of one's self.
Chandrashekhar's dance at Kalakshetra was every bit a kathartic epiphany.
We are humbled by it, and the great force that moves us.
"Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me!
D.H. Lawrence: Song Of A Man Who Has Come Through.
Iam talking of Dr. C.V.Chandrashekhar's dance on the birth anniversary of Rukmini Arundale at he Kalakshetra Rukmini Arangam.
This was dance in its purest form, and it helped that the dancer was in very good shape, and was also very striking to look at. What was incredible is his age. All of seventy five years, and he moved with the grace, agility and energy of a man twenty years younger.
The epiphany was to me a real life experience of Coomaraswamy's "Transformation of Art in Nature." The dance was not a "performance"; it seemed to be just an organic extension of the music.
This is not a report on the dance, but a note on how the dance affected me, and the connections that it lead me to form. I understood,sitting there in the darkened auditorium, that all theories of aesthetics were only attempts to capture and set in some sort of order the emotions that raced through one when confronted with beauty that cannot be quantified. So we struggle to weave a pattern with words to try and convey this blinding revelation of another reality. Aristotle put the feeling down as "katharsis", which very crudely put, is a purging of emotions leaving one "calm of mind, all passion spent". He almost sounds like a physician.
I do believe it is that and much, much more, a "kathahrsis " yes, but leading up to an epiphanic revelation where one is able let go of one's self.
Chandrashekhar's dance at Kalakshetra was every bit a kathartic epiphany.
We are humbled by it, and the great force that moves us.
"Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me!
| If only I let it bear me, carry me, if only it carry me! | ||
| If only I am sensitive, subtle, oh, delicate, a winged gift!" |
D.H. Lawrence: Song Of A Man Who Has Come Through.
Well put. I know exactly what you mean. Would have liked to also be there to see it - to be uplifted by it.
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