CHENNAI : Usain Bolt had once commented, “As an athlete over the years, I have watched world records go and go. When you start breaking records, you are breaking it by 10/100th of a second.” Through that lens, the recently held Paris Olympics the 100m athletic event is considered simply iconic as Noah Lyles won the Olympic gold by a margin of just five thousandth of a second.
But… Why are we discussing sports in an art column?
Well, sports have the highest viewership for showcasing the physicality of the body. Anything that has a viewership with an entertainment or intellectual value is considered to have an aesthetic quotient. Art or sports, there are only three variables — the effects of time on body in space. Both disciplines converge in the treatment of the body as an instrument of potential, and diverge in their purpose.
The story of a sportsman is ‘a part of a whole’; where, ‘the part’ is the experience as a sportsman and ‘the whole’ is the experience of life itself. In contrast, in the story of an artist there are no ‘whole’ or ‘parts’. The goal of art being to realise truth, the journey is of ‘a search’. Having said that, whenever the athletes celebrate, their body in those moments use the language of dance to express themselves. Their gesture of throwing their arms in the air is so honest that it spontaneously stirs up emotions and moves any onlooker. In this way, the dancing community closely shares some principles of the body with the sporting community.
I invited some established Bharatanatyam artists to share their thoughts on the body’s expression in Indian classical dances. Apoorva Jayaraman explains, “In Indian classical dances, we use the body to transcend the physical. So, through the physical arrangement of the fingers in the shape of a flower, we capture the essence of the flower using the body. To put it differently, the task is to make the audience see a flower: not ‘in’, but ‘through’ a dancer’s fingers.
This approach to form makes it possible to create a belief for an audience of a male character through a female dancing body, and vice versa. Hence, the training of the body focuses essentially on whether a dancer can communicate ably through the body instead of the physicality of the body having to be of a certain height, weight or shape like it is for classical ballet.”
Vaibhav Arekar, a delightful artist from Mumbai explains how the movements of pure dance have to be enjoyed. He says, “The kinesthetics of the body in Indian classical dance is to evoke in an audience ananda (bliss), the highest expression worth feeling. To best appreciate Indian classical dances, the audience has to ‘feel’ more than ‘know’ as all dance forms are expressions of ananda: which is a universal expression that anybody should be able to feel instantaneously.”
He continues, “In my experiments while interacting with an uninitiated audience, first, I explain classical dance movements as geometries in space. Then, when I demonstrate using the limbs, neck and head making squares, triangles and circles, they don’t have a problem in how to differentiate Bharatanatyam, Odissi or Mohiniyattam. Where we differ from other dance forms like Western or even Indian folk is how we labour, struggle and strive trying to punctuate the lines using rhythm. The intellectual aspect behind enjoying pure dance segments is to observe how a classical dance artist creates complex rhythmic patterns using the body.”
When Satyajit, dance artist and photographer was asked to comment on the potential of a human body, he says, “The idea of the body as an instrument of expression was always seeded deeply in me, thanks to the dance training. But in one of my quiet moments while observing people working in the fields, I noticed how their daily activities shaped their body spectacularly. In those moments, I felt what the upper middle class tried so hard in air conditioned gyms, came so naturally to those engaged in occupations that involved ‘labour’. Once that perspective dawned on me, I went around for two years observing tree climbers, rice mandi workers, fishermen, mason, domestic helpers who became models for photography.” He brought out a photo exhibition ‘Heavenly Bodies’ honouring the body of those labouring to meet ends.
To sum up, the basic perception of the body for an audience begins first as an indulgence. Even though the body gets objectified in this stage, the potential of the body to entertain is realised. Hence, sports are considered as an elemental sensibility for art appreciation. In contrast, the highest aesthetic value for the body is the ritualistic aspect. In these forms, the expressions of the body act as a medium of communication that bridges divides between two worlds. This aspect of aesthetics carefully weighs and ensures the socio-ecological harmony between man, Nature and God as an auspicious quotient in an ecosystem. In the movie Kantara, the bhoota kola best captures this.
The mediaeval temple art traditions were also the result of such similar high level aesthetic pursuits. Today, the Indian classical art forms have chartered a middle ground for aesthetics as an immersion that kindles the senses and the intellect.