Check the difference: Hema Malini and Vaijayanthimala!

Noopur; TV Serial Part 1, 1990, Hema Malini; Doordarshan

Noopur 1 by hyut7

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Today I was reading the Four Quartets, and yet again, I paused and mused over my favorite lines:

"At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance."

(T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets, "Burnt Norton", II)

It reminded me of a sloka describing Brahma in the Upanishad:

Anoranyan, Mahaton Mah(n)iyan

( smaller than the smallest, greater than the greatest)

Before posting this on my blog, I though I would go online and check the spelling. To my utter horror, it did not pull up any search result. I rechecked with Upanishad and definition of Brahma. Alas! All that I found were links about Brahmins, Yoga Guru-s or how to be a good Hindu. What has the world come to? Can we no longer read about Indian philosophy without reading about how to protect a cow? Chuck it! Let me go and order some Beef Kebab.

Better late than never!

Well, its been long to say the least. But what the heck! As they say, better late than never. A lot has happened since my last post. I have given up on my ambition to study Master of Performing Arts and have joined a corporate office where I do the job of a glorified data entry operator. In the mean time, I have met Tameem (Aamir Tameem) of ECHO!!..India and have done a show or two with him. Theatre, Dance ballet, Bollywood dancing... been there, done that. Now after a very long break, I (being my impulsive, inconsistent self) have suddenly taken to reviews and reporting. In a recent interview with a newspaper office, I was asked if I had a blog in English. Embarrassed to the core, I realized that it has indeed been a very long time since I officially wrote anything. While on a freelancing fling with one of the local magazines, I did this review for a contemporary dance show staged at Lamakaan by Aangik. Things did not work out as expected, I moved on, but this review was gathering dust in my already clustered My Documents folder. So I thought of sharing this with you guys.

Not with a bang but a whimper!

The title of Aangik’s contemporary dance show ‘RASA—Enigma of Black & White’ held enough promise to pull a huge crowd at Lamakaan on the eve of 3rd September 2011. Anticipation arose when the leaflets offered an alternative definition of Rasa through the Chinese philosophy of Yin Yang and was a welcome relief from the done-to-death Navarasa theory. However nature played its sinister best and the show was delayed by more than an hour due to rains. RASA, as promised, began with the felicitation of Dr. Anada Shankar Jayant who managed to hold a rather impatient audience with her highly informative and interesting introductory talk on the history of contemporary dance. The spectacular performance began with Arunima’s depiction of the Serene, denoted by her scintillating white costume. Arunima danced gracefully in the Giesha style to a Chinese(reminded me of Kung Fu Panda!) music piece. But soon enough, the movements became repetitive with stock contemporary motifs. The male dancers’ failed attempt at Kalaripayattu and use of clichéd props like elastic belts to signify the tension between good and evil made the performance rather ordinary. The juxtaposition of white against black, feminine against masculine and beautiful against bestial remained rather incomplete within the short span of the main dance show which lasted a little more than fifteen minutes. The only saving grace was Krishna Shukla’s light design and a sequence which used the ‘Chhau’ folk dance style using masks made by Tirthadip Ghosh. An insatiate audience left the show which was ‘full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’.