From the beginning of humanity, there has been an innate desire to explore the unknown. There have also been leaders and teachers to bridge the gap between the known and the unknown and to lead man to an understanding of the miseries and turmoil’s, which engulf humanity. But there comes a point when each individual has to go beyond the knowledge and discipline imparted by the teacher or guru. That is where the spiritual experience begins.

Life offers the individuals many ways of connecting with one’s highest self. For the artiste, it is through art. A dance form such as Bharata Natyam has evolved on the basis of this principle. In the olden days, it was performed in the temple precincts as an offering to the deity, by the people who dedicated their lives to the art and to God.Perhaps at the time, dance and spirituality were connected - the environment was sacred and the dance had a direct and complete relevance to the life of the dancer. The dancer of today belongs to a setting where the material parameters of human existence come to play.

For most dancers, dance is a part time activity and the focus is on performance. It is very rarely at a dance performance that either the dancer or the audience is elevated to a realm of experience transcending the form or the discipline. The sheer joy of dancing is missing. Somehow the time has come to think and question the approach to a dance form so deeply connected to the spiritual. There is a need for the dancer to go beyond the dance form and technique. While the guru imparts the discipline, it is the role of the student to use it as a vehicle to enjoying the highest spiritual experience. It is then that each dancer stands apart from the other, thereby preventing Bharata Natyam from becoming a museum piece devoid of any contemporary relevance.

The words of the Great Gull in Richard Bach’s “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” come to mind. A thousand lives, John, ten thousand! And then another hundred lives until we begin to learn that there is such a thing as perfection and then another hundred again to get the idea that our purpose for living is to find that perfection and show it forth.” To move beyond form, beyond technique, beyond perfection and to touch ecstasy- to understand the “perfect invisible principle of life”.

If you have to redeem the dance form from the morass of stereotyping and monotony that it has fallen into, it is essential to infuse it with a spirituality which is beyond the the form, the discipline, the ritual and the eliticism which distances it from life and nature.