P. A. Chacko
Dance is an art form. It expresses many things. Joys of life, tensions of life, struggles of life, hopes of life, etc. It also entertains us with cultural traditions.
Dance can demonstrate how people fought wars. How women fought for freedom and rights. Temple dances or church dances are meant to express devotion to the deity.
Tribal war dances depict many things. Anger, frustration, aspirations for liberation, etc. Festive dances, in tune with seasons, express many things.
Tribal dances also relate to nature and even the dance formations of movements have a nature’s touch. Have you noticed the anti-clockwise movement of tribal dancers? It was an eye opener for me.
Next time you watch a tribal dance, watch the direction of the movement. It is anti-clockwise. And look at a plant creeper winding upward around a tree. It is invariably anti-clockwise. Can you not find a similarity between the tribal dance and the creeper’s climb? I am told that the tribals, living in the lap of nature, imitate nature’s patterns.
Haven’t you noticed mother earth’s dance? When it rains, when wind blows, when clouds roam, when streams wind their way, etc.?
She also gyrates in pain when she feels scorched due to excessive heat or when her fields look parched and thirsty for water?
Think of nature’s furious dance with Tsunami strike, with ocean ferment, with storms, lightnings, and whirlwinds? They do carry a message.
How’s that we do not notice the dance of death in the homes and lives of those victimized by poverty, or by terrorists as in Kashmir, by war mongers in Ukraine or Palestine?
Realistic dances, painful as they are, are stark realities that pass before our eyes like menacing clouds, but we little notice them.
Dances stare at us in many forms. Let us see, listen, cogitate, contemplate and drink in the message!