Law of Attraction in Dance

(Photo credit: Ravi Tahilramani)

So, one fine day I was just watching the movie "The Secret". The movie deals with some scientific facts related to human mind. It explains the "law of attraction" which means that the human mind has an ability to attract all the thoughts and convert them into reality. Each single thought has a frequency of its own and if a human mind has dedication and complete attraction towards that thought, it can transform to reality.

I have got this habit of relating every fact that I see or read somewhere with dance. So, I thought how does this "law of attraction" work for classical dancers.

It is said that all Indian classical dance forms are mainly practiced for the spiritual upliftment of a dancer. So how does that practically work? We know God as good as the common man knows him. For example, talking about Shiva or say Vishnu, all aspects related to both these lords are all written in our scriptures and everyone must be aware about their presence, their appearance, and the kathas related to them. Then why is a common man not called spiritually uplifted although he knows God the same way we know God? How is our attachment more toward him as compared to the common man?

Every classical dance form has different piece that they practice and perform during their training period. Each such piece is related to a Lord that the dancer describes. Be it a padam, a varnam, a kirtanam or even tillana, it describes the God in one or the other form. Through dance we describe God's beauty, his Leela, his appearance, his contribution to the upbringing of the whole human race and all other aspects.

Here comes the "law of attraction" that I was talking about. While practicing we are taught to feel as if the God is right in front of you and feel his present so that the real Abhinaya can be seen on our face. So even while practicing or while performing, our mind is constantly thinking about the Lord we are describing. So every single moment that we dance or practice we have our Lord in our mind and that’s where we are attracting the God more towards us. A common man will listen/read the stories or kathas about various God and then forget about it. We take those stories a step ahead and describe them through our dance and thus constantly meditate on God through dance. So that’s where our spiritual level gets uplifted.

I am not very sure if this is the real reason why classical dancers are called spiritually uplifted. But I feel this is how it must be working.

- Chintan Patel, student at Rasadhwani