Dance is an exuberant leap of life towards its source.Just as a tree bursts out of its nourishing soil to seek the sun, so too does the dancer seek out the creative source.
This need not be a conscious process.
It need not be a decision, a desire, a demand, or a destination.
It just needs to be dance.
The child sways to music long before it can talk. Or walk.
The soul never forgets how to dance, though minds and bodies may be ashamed of it.
To dance is to affirm life.
Which means that to dance is to risk.
Risk is not popular; systems that eliminate it are.
With dance you risk – ridicule, unwelcome self-awareness.
But also at risk is stagnant thought and depressing plainness.
When dancing, no one is ordinary.
A system of dance should not be confused with dance and dancing.
“We cannot dance”, means we don’t know a system.
So long as we can move, we can dance.
If this means something to observers, fine. If it means nothing, even better.
Does it mean something to you, something beyond the hotch-potch of clichés and assumptions and social conditioning of what dance is and what it should do?
Don’t enter a state of hot air about “Transcendental experience” and ” Being one with the universe”. A dancer has no time to think and feel such things – dancers are too busy dancing. Dance is not a vehicle for personal expression; dance is about your personality interacting with the world. Hence the importance of dance in cultures across the world, its primacy in ritual and magic.
Movement has its own language which language is usually inadequate to clearly express.
Dance with wit, with idiosycracy, with crankiness even.
Don’t dance in other people’s minds.
Not even in your own mind.
If the body is true, the mind and soul follow. So does the world.
For the world, Jagat comes from Ja – that which is born and Gat - movement.
Jagat is that which is born out of movement.
Dance is movement at its best and its purest – at its worst and ugliest – hence dance expresses the world peculiarly well.
Hindu mythology captued the essence of this insight most magnificently in the Ananda Tandava Murthi better known as the Nataraja, king of dance. But Ananda Tandava means the ‘Bliss Dance’ and Shiva is therefore The Bliss Dancer. The Lord of the World, Vishvanatha Shiva is also the all-pervading consciousness. The World is thus the Dance of Bliss which is Shiva.
“Dancing gods must come” said Nietzche, unconsciously echoing the Nataraja who is also Nrityashila - habituated to dance. For Shiva like all dancers, not only expresses the personal view of the world but embodies it in the physical form.
Another great form of movement, the martial arts, shares these insights with dance.
Without humility, there is no pride.
Without ignorance, there is no learning.
Without fear, there is no courage.
To dance is not just about art or craft or skill or dedication and achievement.
It is about the appetite to dare, to be exuberant, and to be yourself.
To dance is to make this moment, now, worth living.
Rohit Arya is an Author, Yogi and Polymath. He has written the first book on Vaastu to be published in the West, {translated into five languages} the first book on tarot to be published in India, co-authored a book on fire sacrifice, and is the creator of The Sacred India Tarot {82 card deck and book}. He has also written A Gathering of Gods. He is the Editor of The Leadership Review, a corporate trainer, as well as an arts critic and cultural commentator. Rohit is also a Lineage Master in the Eight Spiritual
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