Quotes

"A good teacher is better than a spectacular teacher. Otherwise the teacher outshines the teachings."
- The Tao of Teaching

Criticism has to be unflattering sometimes. It isn't produced to instruct dancers how to correct or improve their work. And it requires more than instant, off-the-cuff reaction.
Critiquing and writing criticism are not the same...
Criticism plays an important role in the evolution of a culture. It establishes a detailed historical record. Previews and other informational writing create mythology in advance.
After the performance, the dancers and the companies themselves carry on that mythology, and through the normal process of information decay, it spins into ever more reductive categorizing and celebrating. The critical account comes from the scene itself, as opposed to those other accounts delivered before the fact. It's an authentic, public response - even if it's partial, even if it's subjective, even if it's inaccurate - of one person to a public event. And of course, the more critical views there are of that public event, the fuller picture of it emerges when it's over. History has to be bigger and deeper than the record that's controlled by dancers themselves.
(Marcia B Siegel in 'Critical Practice in the Age of Spin' - DCA (Dance Critics Association) News Winter 2005)

"The dance is a poem of which each movement is a word."
- Mata Hari

I do not think one should be innovative for the sake of being innovative. Or try to do something under pressure. Particularly the growing craze for thematic presentation is amusing, when there is a margam that is versatile, vibrant and offers enough variety.
(Alarmel Valli in 'When tradition is given new dimensions,' The Hindu, Dec 1, 2005)

It's the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance.
It is the dream afraid of waking that never takes the chance.
It is the one who won't be taken who cannot seem to give.
And the soul afraid of dying that never learns to live.
- Bette Midler

"Though Kuchipudi dance form is not my personal favorite, I am sensitive to the fact that, like Kathakali, it needs great help to maintain the dance drama tradition in all male format. Moreover, in its absence the form has degenerated into "so-low" dance form! I am not against female dancers but just want that coming generation of rasikas are not bereft of experiencing the joy of watching men convincingly perform as women."
(Subbudu in 'Dance like a woman!' Statesman, June 10, 2005)

"I can do my dance, and I can feel one thing, and the audience member can see it and feel another, and there's nothing wrong... It gives everybody a lot of room."
- Douglas Dunn (Courtesy DCA News (Dance Critics Association USA), Spring 2000)

"Reasons may be several but the fact is classical dance is just not attracting crowds. What is it that keeps music lovers away from classical dance? Why are the majority of music rasikas not able to appreciate dance? Could it be that the habit of listening to music kutcheris is deeply ingrained handed down from generation to generation over the past hundred years, whereas attending public performances of Bharatanatyam is of relatively recent origin starting in the 1930s?
What could motivate the section of music lovers which is probably too lazy, indifferent, snooty or simply too busy to try and educate itself on the aesthetic nuances of Bharatanatyam?
Dance, like music, is the expression of the human spirit. Dance is 'visual music'."
(S Janaki in 'Why dance finds few takers,' The Hindu, Dec 1, 2005)

"Dance is your pulse, your heartbeat, your breathing. It's the rhythm of your life. It's the expression in time and movement, in happiness, joy, sadness and envy."
- Jaques D'Amboise

"The arts stand naked and without defense in a world where what cannot be measured is not valued; where what cannot be predicted will not be risked...where whatever cannot deliver a forecast outcome is not undertaken...
The final value of the arts cannot be predicted or quantified; to curtail them on these grounds is to deny the possibility of an unpredictable benefit. The risk of funding the arts offers benefits far greater then the immediate gains of not funding them. The arts link society to its past, a people to its inherited store of ideas, images and words; yet the arts challenge those links in order to find ways of exploring new paths and ventures...
The arts are evolutionary and revolutionary; they listen, recall and lead. They resist the homogenous, strengthen the individual and are independent in the face of the pressures of the mass, the bland, the undifferentiated. In a post modern world in which individual creativity has never mattered more, the arts provide the opportunity for developing this characteristic. The investment in the arts is small, the actual return so large, that it represents value as research into ideas."
John Tusa ('Why the arts matter' The Hindu, Dec 14, 2005)

"Dancers are instruments, like a piano the choreographer plays."
- George Balanchine

"Some traditionalists came down heavily on my research but I told them, If you find it inconvenient to accept my style, then I shall call my dance Bharatanrityam instead of Bharatanatyam."
(Padma Subrahmanyam, Aug 2004 Savvy, p 49, 'Dance Diva')

"You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions."
- Naguib Mahfouz

"Only people, who can't do the stuff we do, say such things. They have no idea of the hard work, discipline, physical exertion and creativity that goes into such 'circus acts'. Most classical dancers oppose my work.

The ultimate tribute a shishya can pay a guru is to try to go beyond him/her, but classical dancers do not encourage this."
- Daksha Sheth in 'Dance to a different beat,' the Hindu, June 12, 2005

"The Dancer believes that his art has something to say which cannot be expressed in words or in any other way than by dancing... there are times when the simple dignity of movement can fulfill the function of a volume of words. There are movements which impinge upon the nerves with a strength that is incomparable, for movement has power to stir the senses and emotions, unique in itself. This is the dancer's justification for being, and his reason for searching further for deeper aspects of his art."
- Doris Humphrey, 1937

"A stage has now come, when there is a general conflict between tradition bound purists and tradition bound Innovators. The purists always argue that in classical dance, our ancestors have created the best and the finest masterpieces with the result there is no scope for modern enthusiasts to better them whereas, the Innovators are of the determined opinion that even in a tradition-bound art there is scope for variety, unbounded richness and unique nuances...

A sense of revolt and change is ever present in most practicing artists. It is this spirit of adventure that makes art a mirror of its time. It is a common practice amongst all aged persons to condemn the changes of their present days and praise their good old days. But when the changes get settled in the patterns of art, there are no more voices denigrating erstwhile changes, because they have become one with tradition! And so life goes on, art marches on and culture passes on."

("Tradition and Innovation in Indian dance," U S Krishna Rao, in Shrungara, Maha-Maya Golden Jubilee Celebrations Souvenir, 1992)

"We dance for laughter, we dance for tears, we dance for madness, we dance for fears, we dance for hopes, we dance for screams, we are the dancers, we create the dreams."

Nowadays, if some persons are vastly talented than us, we do not congratulate them – we envy them and resent their success. It seems we do not want heroes we can admire, so much as heroes we can identify with. We want to think we can be like them, and so we make sure to select heroes that are like us. We worship David Beckam because he is fallible. If Achilles were around today, the headlines would all be about his heel.

Raw talent is not distributed equally. By definition, most of us are not exceptional. We are neither particularly stupid, nor exceptionally intelligent. Only a very few are extremely gifted. But it is to these exceptionally talented people that the rest of us owe most of the greatest achievements of humankind. The Mona Lisa, the Goldberg variations and King Lear were not the work of ordinary people like you and me. They were the work of geniuses, people so much more talented than us that we could never paint or write anything comparable to their achievements, no matter how hard we tried or how long we lived.

To some, those thoughts seem so humiliating and threatening that it must not even be countenanced. But to me it is liberating and inspiring. It is precisely the realization that I will never be the equal of Mozart or Goethe that allows me to sit back and enjoy what they have bequeathed to me. It is my recognition of their greatness, my admission of their immeasurable superiority of their talent that redeems my mediocrity. It is good to be human, not because every human can be great, but because a few people have shown us the heights to which humanity can occasionally ascend. Without the shining achievements of these few, the human race would be a waste of space.

Consider also how unattractive it is when someone begrudges another’s talent, when they cannot praise success without also seeking to undermine it or feel diminished when a colleague wins praise. It is a sign of a mean spirit. Conversely, the person who shows unreserved admiration thereby becomes admirable. To applaud someone else’s achievements or good fortune, without the slightest trace of envy or resentment, is a mark of true generosity.

(Dylan Evans, “Mozart redeems our mediocrity”, the Hindu, July 22, 2005)

"Too many times we stand aside and let the waters slip away,
till what we put off till tomorrow has now become today.
So don't you sit upon the shoreline and say you're satisfied.
Choose to chance the rapids and dare to dance the tide."
- Anonymous

"It has been said with some justification that the oversized dancer in Indian classical dance does not evoke the kind of waspish comments he or she would in the West, where ballet is less accommodating of the fat dancer. We quote verses from the Natya Shastra or the Abhinaya Darpana upholding comments made on the dance, but keep silent when it comes to a dancer whose girth negates the physical attributes prescribed for a dancer in the shastras. In fact, some performers would seem to sport those very qualities mentioned as disqualification."
- Leela Venkataraman in 'A question of weight,' Hindu, Delhi, June 10, 2005)

"Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education; dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen?"
- Friedrich Nietzsche

"At the recent Thyagaraja Festival in Delhi, I heard the guest of honor paid floral tribute to the portrait of St Thyagaraja wearing his Prada shoes. This is just one of the many stories where the sanctity of the art is sold in lieu of gimmickry. Last year at two dance recitals, the dancers came down from the stage to present the bouquet to the chief guests! How atrocious can we get? How then the artistes explain their spiritual flight while performing on stage? If you are so spiritually uplifted, would you care who has come and who hasn't?"
- Subbudu in 'Patronising the patrons' - Statesman, June 3, 2005

"The language is different but the sameness of the message through the length and breadth of the country shows that it is our poets and music composers who have really united the country into one. Politics has always created diverse feelings with people being treated as vote banks and spoken to in different groups. But it is the literature and music of the country that have created bonds."
Leela Venkataraman
(Nartanam, Vol IV #3, p71-72, July-Sept 2004)

"We have to lament that in today’s world of marketing and commerce, we have reached a nadir where the dancer has almost no space, either physical or metaphorical. The dancer simply has no product to market (no CDs and cassettes like the musician or instrumentalist, no painting or sculpture like the artist, no buildings or plans like the architect, no books like the authors and poets) except the ability to create an intangible art form which springs alive only for that moment, and then, evanescent, fades from all existence, except in memory. And memory cannot be marketed.
Hence it is that all the related industries that have cropped up to market the other arts, like galleries, publishing houses, ad agencies, music companies with sales planets and even galaxies, have no equivalents for dance simply because the dancer and the dance have no commercial value."
- Geeta Chandran (‘World Dance Day’ Asian Age, Kolkata April 29, 2005)

"Dance, like music, knows no geographical boundaries, no linguistic barriers and no racial divisions. All walls crumble where art is concerned. It is a great unifying and integrating force."
- Vempatti Chinna Satyam
(Nartanam Vol IV #3, p46, July-Sept 2004)

"My experience with dancers has been very peculiar. They generally like a studio photo shoot before their actual performances. I sometimes wonder how they are more careful about their costumes during the shoot. It is interesting to see them adjust to their surroundings to get the best shots, they would get restless, put music on to give the best poses. The same evening you see them so involved in their art form, oblivious of costumes and makeup."
Avinash Pascricha, photographer
("Rhythm at my feet," Pioneer, New Delhi, April 29, 2005)

There is no denying that some critics have let power go to their heads. One of them declared, "When I wish to annihilate, then I do annihilate." But, as may be expected, the artist has the last word. Liberace, the popular American musician, told his critics: "What you said hurt me very much. I cried all the way to the bank." And John Sibelius, the eminent composer, said, "I pay no attention to what critics say. There has never been a statue set up in honor of a critic."
- H.Y. Sharada Prasad, 'The artist and the critic'
(Asian Age, Editorial Page, 6th April 2005)

If you wish in this world to advance
Your merits you’re bound to enhance;
You must stir it and stump it,
And blow your own trumpet,
Or, trust me, you haven’t a chance
- W S Gilbert

"The rasika is one who takes pains to sit through concerts, has a sense of appreciation, can discriminate between cadence and noise, melody and cacophony, natural grace and mere drill, genuine feeling and robotic expressions of face, gait and stance, and rich profundity and brash mediocrity of ethos. He need not be well versed in ragas and their lakshanas, mudras and adavus or the more mysterious nadais, eduppus, sollus, jatis and teermanams. Aesthetics is not academics. Let not the average audience hand over the authority to distinguish between creativity and monstrosity only to illustrious celebrities and learned critics. The rasika is the judge, and his language is probably silence, at best. Let a few mind boggling, mindless swara-korvais, devoid of any melodic values, gigantic in their scheme, pass without a murmur or a resounding applause, let the audience show by face its disappointment at a kriti being sidelined to give way to a singer’s exercises practiced at home, let a vague presentation in a dance, whose meaning is not clear to a rasika pass without claps – and then we would be seeing producers of art taking a serious view and start exercising their imagination properly."
P S Krishnamurthy
(The ball is in the rasika’s court, The Hindu, Dec 1, 2004)

"Thinking is easy but acting is difficult and to put one’s thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world"
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Dance criticism is necessary for the life of a nation’s cultural heritage and for the inculcation of love and appreciation for the arts in the younger generation. In the absence of checks and balances, the art, which is ephemeral, suffers since it vanishes the moment it is created in space and time.”
- Sunil Kothari
(DCA News, Spring 2004, p11)

“There is a general decline of taste for classical dance, which is neglected and this must be developed from the grassroots. There is so much of razzle-dazzle of Bollywood dancing that classical dance suffers. Also, the stumbling block is Bharata Natyam - it is the language that is not emotionally evolved.

Kerala has one peculiar phenomenon: each girl learns Bharata Natyam, Kuchipudi, Mohiniattam, and they just take part in inter-university competitions, and that's all. There is no seriousness.

We have more students for Bharata Natyam. When I ask them why they want to learn it, they reply: because Hema Malini dances Bharata Natyam.”
- Kanak Rele, (‘My eroticism is not offensive', Statesman, Kolkata, Oct 29, 2004)

“In seeking wisdom, the first stage is silence, the second listening, the third remembrance, the 4th practicing, the fifth teaching.”
- Solomon Ibn Gabiro

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
- George Bernard Shaw

“Solo performance has the key to the strength of classical dances like Odissi and Bharatanatyam. Group work is very fashionable now, but the tapasya of the artists does not show in them. Group choreographies are fine, but they should not be done at the cost of solo performance, because the artist's ability to hold the attention of the audience and delineate a subject comes through only in a solo.”
- Sonal Mansingh

“Varnam or Nrityopahaaram (an offering of dance and mime) is the judicious combination of Nritta, Nritya and Naatya, expounding the deep-rooted technique of physical, mental and spiritual background of Bharatanaatyam. This can be termed as the quintessence or epitome of a technique that has withstood the test of time.

The construction of the present day ‘Varnam’ format in a solo Bharatanaatyam performance has the time and space for a dancer to exploit her or his technical virtuosity and keep the attentive interest of the audience, irrespective of the length of delineation, whether it is for 30 minutes or 60 minutes or more.

The success and failure of a Bharatanaatyam artiste depend on how well one could perform a ‘Nrityoopahaaram’ to the fullest satisfaction of a discerning connoisseur audience.”
- V P Dhananjayan

“More needs to be done about changing the entire infrastructure that preserves culture. I’m not talking of just dance; it’s an inter-related web of relationships. Monuments, conservation, nature, ecology, music, dance, food – all are interrelated. I think all of this is culture.”
- Swapnasundari (‘Her Story’, First City, Sept 2004)

“A true master is not the one with the most students, but one who creates the most masters. A true leader is not the one with the most followers, but one who creates the most leaders. A true king is not the one with the most subjects, but the one who leads the most to royalty.”
- Neale Donald Walsch in Conversations with God. (The Speaking Tree, Times of India, Nov 16, 2004)

“No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time; it is just that others are behind the times.”
- Martha Graham

“The really great dancer is perhaps a rarer phenomenon than great musicians, painters or sculptors. This is because dance is a consummation of all these arts. The dancer, in addition to the qualities that pure dance demands, must be sensitive to and have an uncanny ear for music, must have a painter’s sensibility to the significant line, a sculptor’s approach to form, an architect’s vision of space and a trained actor’s responses to dramatic situations.”
- K Subhas Chandran (‘Beloved Guruji’- p3)

“Dialogue between critics and dancers is essential, not only for the flourishing of the art but also for the flourishing of our society. Let’s remember that civilizations are not remembered for the territories they have conquered, or the wars they have won or lost, but for the manner in which they supported and recognized their artists.”
- Rita Feliciano
(DCA News, Spring 2004, p10)

“The real self of an artiste lies in art, so when an artiste performs, all the pain, trauma and tension get released through art, be it dancing, painting, singing, writing or even martial arts.”
- Mrinalini Sarabhai
(“Dance, a great stress buster,” Tribune, New Delhi, July 12, 2004)

“For an artiste, the place in the audience’s heart and in the history of the art form itself is the greatest honor. Only genuine caliber and nothing else could buy this.”
- Kalamandalam Gopi, Kathakali maestro
(“Lifelong Endeavor” by K K Gopalakrishnan, The Hindu - Delhi, March 7, 2004)

“A dancer should learn from all the arts. Go to museums and look at the paintings. See how they balance things. Everything you do in the arts enriches you.”
- Alicia Alonso
(‘Alonso inspires’ by Karen Hildebrand, p 25, Dance Magazine, Jan 2004)

“Man has used human rhythmic movement as raw material out of which to create works of art, as the composer of music uses sound, the sculptor uses stone and wood, the painter his pigments, and the writer – words.’’
- Ted Shawn

“It’s true of all great artists that the more you see, the more you want to see”
- Peter Anastos – choreographer
(‘Balanchine Lives,’ p 93, Dance Magazine, Jan 2004)

“You should be very contemporary in dealing with tradition. Don’t keep tradition as a tradition, but as a contemporary art.”
- G Venu (p36, Nuances, First City, Jan 2004)

"When drama is all embracing, it leads mankind. It is a means of education and instruction. It gives relief to the lucky and the unlucky, to the successful and the unsuccessful, to the joyful and the suffering. Those who are in the shadow are treated the same as those who are in the light. Drama is an image of the world and a vision of the supreme powers. Hence a theatrical performance should not be held without worshipping the deities of the stage. Thus the sacred wisdom of the Natya Sastra."
(p 207, "Rupa Pratirupa Alica Boner Commemoration Volume" chapter 'Is acting an art?' by Georgette Boner)

“There is no difference between the left eye and the right eye, they both give us one vision. Likewise with dance, the personalities are very different but they give you the totality of one emotional and artistic expression”.
- Sonal Mansingh
(“Roll up the carpet,” Indian Express Mumbai, Nov 13, 2003)

“A dance legacy must be performed in order to be preserved”
- Ann Daly, in DCA News Spring 2000

“Good art is a form of prayer. It's a way to say what is not sayable.”
- Frederich Busch

“I like to think dance is an international language that all people can appreciate. All societies have some form of dance as a form of communication.”
- Paul Taylor (American choreographer)
(Newsweek, July 28, 2003)

“We enter through the gopuram (center hall) of alarippu, cross the ardha mandapam (1/2 way hall) of jatiswaram, then the mandapam (great hall) of sabdam and enter the holy precinct of the deity in the varnam”.
-T. Balasaraswathi 1975
At the Tamil Isai Conference

The self is the ocean, the mind is a wave and thoughts are the sparkles on the waves.
- Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Culture is the ability to understand other people's point of view.
- Jawaharlal Nehru

Art is the most secular of all human inventions; it reaches out to human hearts beyond man made artificial barriers of color, creed and political boundaries.
- Dr. R Sathyanarayana

“The sensitive artiste develops the “hearing ear” and the ‘seeing eye” which forever lead one to seek search, making one’s entire life a voyage of discovery”.
- Chitra Visweswaran

"Dance has to unfold with the grace of a tree giving out leaves, flowers and then tiny fruit. Nothing so beautiful can be done in haste".
- Pt. Birju Maharaj

"There is no other knowledge, no other learning, no other art, not even yoga or action that is not found in dance."
- Natya Sastra

Dance is the medium that ties together modern cultures with those that are
fading, and a form that appeals to both the wealthy and the poor.
- Madeline Nichols
(courtesy DCA News)

"Education in the art of dance is education of the whole man - his physical, mental and emotional natures are disciplined and nourished simultaneously in dance."
- Ted Shawn

"Contrary to conventional wisdom, dance is not a universal “language’ but many languages and dialects. There are close to 6000 verbal languages, and probably that many dance languages."
- Judith Lynne Hanna
(Courtesy DCA News)

"Dance is like wine - it matures with every performance."
-Alarmel Valli

“A dance performance is rather like going out into a battlefield. You have to hold the attention of as many as five to 10,000 people, a lot of whom do not follow your language”
- Yamini Krishnamurthy

"The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work."
- Emile Zola (1840-1902)

“Dance, like music and other arts, helps us rise above the beast in ourselves.”
- Sudharani Raghupathy

“Dance communicates man’s deepest, highest and most truly spiritual thoughts and emotions far better than words, spoken or written.”
- Ted Shawn

"The higher up you go, the more mistakes you are allowed. Right at the top, if you make enough of them, it's considered to be your style."
- Fred Astaire

"Art is not what you see, but what you make others see."
- Edgar Degas

"When you are trying to serve society in any way,
you have to experience what they call the inner loneliness.
It comes from the fact that you don't do what people expect you to do.
All the time you do things differently and that is why you are what you are."
- Nelson Mandela

"I am simple and I am sincere, therefore my art is from my heart."
- Pina Bausch

"I do believe the body is the center of your being, center of your world.
And you, after all, are the centre that holds the universe together."
- Chandralekha

"Our problem is not so much one of rebirth of an Indian culture as it is one of preserving what remains of it. Indian culture is of value to us not because it is Indian, but because it is culture."
- Ananda Coomaraswamy

"My dancing is not an attempt to interpret life in the literary sense. It is an affirmation of life through movement."
- Martha Graham

"Whither the hand goes, the glance follows,
Whither the glances lead, the mind follows,
Whither the mind goes, there the mood follows
Whither the mood goes, there is “rasa” born."
- Abhinaya Darpana