In BAC’s new Wellness Studio Blog, we invite you to share the passion we have for healing arts, and show how you can use featured Brooklyn traditions from our global diasporas to nurture and heal your body, community, and soul.
Today’s Brooklyn tradition that heals: Bharatanatyam!
Bharatanatyam is a style of Indian classical dance. It originated over 2,000 years ago in modern-day Tamil Nadu. It was performed in temples and courts as interpretive narrations of stories in Hindu text. These scriptures from Hindu text were not always available for non-elites to read, so dance arose as a way to share narratives with common people.
Bharatanatyam is known for expressive hands, eyes, and faces, along with a series of poses and gestures, each with a different meaning. Each hand gesture alone constitutes a mudra, which communicate specific ideas, events, actions, or characters.
Visit BAC Sonic Clinic to hear the sounds of Bharatanatyam and meet Aeilushi Mistry, a Brooklyn-based teaching artist, performer, and choreographer.
We spoke to Bharatanatyam dancer and choreographer, Preeti Vasudevan:
“The body is the first instrument, no matter where you begin, the body is what you're born with. And I think the more intimately we are connected with the body, the more we feel grounded.”
Make your face as big as you can.
Open your mouth, your eyes wide, raise your eyebrows.
Then, scrunch up your face to make it as small as you can. Shut your lips, squeeze your eyes shut.
Notice the difference in where your energy is focused.
Try to create one of these mudras.
Allow your hands and the rest of your body to move with the sound.
Each mudra holds a meaning, idea, or action. For instance, the mudra Pataka means cloud or forest. Hamsasya, means swan head.