Dancers From India

"Quoted in Verve: The Spirit of Today's Woman (page 74)"

"For me dancing is not just moving your arms and legs but basically it's a very spiritual experience. It's part of me and a second nature to me. You can say it is in my blood."

"I don't understand the difference between being a star and being an actress. If you are a good actress, you can also be a star but it does not work the other way round. You must be able to deliver the goods."

"I hope I am not sounding presumptuous or vain. but I think like Sridevi, I was another heroine who could break the barriers between the classes and the masses."

"It's so ironical. When you finally achieve recognition, you hide behind dark glasses."

"Good films flop, atrocious films do well. Uncertainty is the only certainty in this business."

"The tendency in the media is to portray everyone in the film industry as sex-starved creatures. Please spare us."

"Depend on yourself and you will never be let down."

"Acting is a bit like cycling. Once you’ve got the hang of it, you just peddle on."

"I find it funny to praise myself, but I think I am beautiful, just like Chandramukhi."

"I have never been a part of the numbers game. We are not racing horses, who should be numbered. Either the work you do is good or bad."

"When Hussainji narrated the script [on Gaja Gamini] to me, I couldn´t understand it. And I told him so. So, he worked out a storyboard and then I could visualize the whole film. You know the film is like a painting on celluloid."

"I adore the concept of being in love with one guy and spending the rest of my life with him."

"My family gives me enough security and warmth. I don’t have to look for it outside! After achieving so much success and fame I’m apprehensive about people’s motives. I want to be sure that people want to be friends with me and not my fame!"

"Nightingale of Parliament."

"Madhuri is an excellent dancer. She is in the same league with actresses like Waheeda Rehman and Meena Kumari as far as dancing is concerned. She dances with a lot of grace. I think she is the best dancer in Indian cinema after Waheeda Rehman. She reminds me of her,"

"I worked with her for the first time in 1997 for a dance sequence where actor (Shah Rukh) is playing the drum in another room and she dances on those beats."

"It has been more than 15 years but her dedication towards dance is the same. She grasps quickly and is a genius dancer. Her expressions are just perfect."

"Madhuri has kept the tradition of classical dance in cinema alive. Be it Devdas's 'Kahe Ched Mohe' or dance sequence of DTPH , she has performed brilliantly."

"My interest was dance and, in the beginning, I didn't enjoy acting at all. It was my mother who brought me into films and who looked after my career. I remember each time a producer came to meet her, my only reaction was, 'Oh God, another year of my life gone.'"

"Dance was really the art of the temple and that her temple theater was built with that purpose in mind. It has many features of the temple , and we have adopted as much as possible all the ideals enshrined in Natyashastra."

"To recreate the temple atmosphere on the urban stage, and thus to facilitate a new kind of seeing that would enable the spiritual revival of the dance."

"That she learned ballet not with the idea of becoming a full-fledged dancer. It was just to train my body and more for the sheer joy of learning something beautiful."

"To be truly Indian one had to be truly international, exhorting them to honour the best in all civilizations and to live it in their daily lives."

"I was brought up on Music, and being near Tiruvaiyaru for sometime during childhood , I got several opportunities to listen to great Music."

"It is the spirit of Purusha and Prakriti, an expression of evolution of movement, a truly creative force that is handed down the ages. This embodiment of sound and rhythm creating spiritual poetry is called dance or Natya. . . . The first glimpse of the dance comes to us from Siva Himself, a Yogi of Yogis. He shows us the Cosmic Dance and portrays to us he unity of Being. . . . The Cosmic Rhythm of His dance draws around Him ensouled matter, which manifests itself into the variety of this infinite and beautiful universe."

"Observation of a relative in"

"There used to be beggar, a sort of maniac, who would jump up and dance like a monkey while singing tat tarigappa tei ta, tat tarigappa tei ta. Bala would imitate him, both dancing like monkeys... All of us tried to snub him but the beggar could not be turned out. It meant a few coins for him; he made a regular visit to our house and the two used to dance. That was the real starting point for Bala’s dancing mania."

"When asked why she thought there was deterioration in standards and expectations of art, she suggested it was the result of the fuss generated around young dancers, the pressures to perform at an early debut, and the indiscriminate acclaim given to young dancers before they had found their feet."

"Actually, dance forms an intrinsic part of worship in the temples. . . . India alone has a concept of a God who dances. Siva is Nataraja, Lord of dancers, who dances in the Hall of Consciousness and weaves into it the rhythm of the Universe. Within His Cosmic Dance are included the Divine prerogatives of Creation, Preservation, Regeneration, Veiling and Benediction . . . Dance in India has been so closely linked with religion, that today it is impossible to think of it divorced from this essential background."

"Dignified restraint is the hallmark of abhinaya....The divine is divine only because of its suggestive, subtle quality."

"Although she was blind by that time, she was the best critique of my dance. If there is any one I would like to known, I would like to be remembered as Danam’s granddaughter."

"It was my mother, Jayammal, who had me trained as a dancer despite strong family opposition."

"Bharatanatyam is grounded in bhakthi. In fact bhakthi is at the center of all arts of India. Our music and dance are two offerings to God...This experience may only occur once in a while but when it does for that little duration, its grandeur enters the soul not transiently but with a sense of eternity. As one gets involved in the art, with greater and greater dedication, one can continuously experience throughout the few hours of the dance, the unending joy, this complete well-being, especially when music and dance mingle indistinguishably."

"The initial inspiration for me to take up dancing came from seeing performances of Gauri Ammal when I was very young. If this lady had not brought the dance to such a stage of development, the combination of music and dance that I have attempted to realize would not have been possible."

"It may be true that I had dancing in my blood... I was a toddler when I danced deliriously with that street beggar. All called him a madman when he brought the house down with his frenetic dancing. Was he really mad? His unerring jatis (danced to rhythmic patterns) reverberate in my mind. Who knows which siddhapurusha (literally: “with all accomplishments”) he was? I can still see the gleam in his eye. If I am dance-mad now how could it be otherwise?... My first guru was a madman."

"However, Hindu savants worked tirelessly to remove the Christian slurs cast on this art form. Chief among them was Rukmini Devi Arundale (1904–86), who protected and revived this dance by founding the Kalakshetra Academy of Dance and Music in 1936. She made it an acceptable norm for girls (and even boys) from middle-class households to learn Bharata Natyam. Though operated like a modern institution, it functioned as a traditional gurukula , focusing on prayers to the deity Ganapati, vegetarianism, and a guru-shishya relationship. Throughout Tamil Nadu, the guru-shishya form of decentralized, one-on- one learning spread in various ways as part of this revival. Thus far from being dead as intended by missionaries, colonialists and their Indian cronies, Bharata Natyam again became well established as a spiritual art-form in South India, and started to achieve acclaim throughout India and abroad. Kalakshetra grew into a university with a large campus in Chennai... Rukmini Arundale, a guru who rescued the dance form from the era of colonial evangelism, speaks of dance as 'Sadhana which requires total devotion'... She speaks of the Ramayana and Mahabharata as the 'essential expressions of Indian dance'."

"She was the only one where the music and dance were equally important... her dance moves were deeply affected by this... she was able to convey not only the meaning of the dance, but also the emotion of the music. That’s what I liked best."

"Perhaps the greatest Indian dancer of the past thousand years."

"Rukmini of glorious past will be guru Agastya’s messenger to the women and young ones in India taking up for a large part of the work there that I have been carrying on for years. Young in body, yet she is old in wisdom and power. Child of the indomitable will is her welcome in the higher world."

"Many people have said many things. I can only say I did not consciously go after dance. It found me.""

"An iconoclastic dancer, visionary institution builder, educationalist, elite woman privileged to travel the world when she was barely 25 years of age and empowered to work for global causes in Europe, Australia, England and America. Also perceived as uncompromising traditionalist, quintessential South Indian Brahmin girl, champion of animal rights, woman parliamentarian, craft revivalist, social reformer, cultural educator, and national icon."

"Why was India a world power? Because Sri Krishna had lived in this country, Sri Rama had lived here and so had Lord Buddha. It was their Teaching that made India a great world power."

"Why does the story of Kumarasambhava please me? It is because of the symbolism. Finally what Parvati wins is not passion but the devotion and sublimation of herself. Parvati wins Siva and she becomes united with Him, because she has discovered the greater, indeed the only way of discovering God. This is very beautiful symbology. Siva burnt to ashes all that is physical. So must a dancer or musician burn to ashes all thought which is dross and bring out the gold which is within."

"Some people say, 'I believe in universal religion', but when I ask them whether they know anything about Hinduism, they answer in negative. They know nothing about Christianity, nor about Buddhism or about any other religion either. In other words, universality is, knowing nothing of anything. . . . Real internationalism is truly the emergence of the best in each. . . . But, in India, when I say India, I mean the India of the sages and saints who gave the country its keynote, there arose the ideal of one life, and of the divinity that lives in all creatures; not merely in humanity."

"All the songs we dance to are of Gods and Goddesses. You may ask, why so many Gods and Goddesses? The only reply I can give is, Why not so many Gods and Goddess ?"

"We dance with our bodies, but we finally forget them and transform them."

"Women have everything to do with bringing culture into everyday life, with the expression of it, with the helping and influencing of a nation, not only because they are mothers but also because they themselves are an example as individuals. The modern world needs a new force for the revitalizing of its ideals. India’s art has always been unconscious, unconscious of its own beauty, unconscious of others’ admiration, unconscious of the physical though expressed in Form. India is now beginning to be conscious and we do not know how to express ourselves consciously. A great dancer’s art must depend first on the life he or she expresses, secondly upon the beauty of technique and lastly only, upon its arrangement, costume, and presentation....Though form, technique and skill are essential, great Art must have the impetus of genius, and inspiration. Then there is permanency."

"Animals cannot speak, but can you and I not speak for them and represent them? Let us all feel their silent cry of agony and let us all help that cry to be heard in the world."

"The demand for vegetarian food will increase our production of the right kind of plant foods. We shall cease to breed pigs and other animals for food, thereby ceasing to be responsible for the horror of slaughter houses where millions of creatures cry in vain because of man's selfishness. If such concentration camps for slaughtering continue, can peace ever come to earth? Can we escape the responsibility for misery when we are practicing killing every day of our lives by consciously or unconsciously supporting this trade of slaughter? Peace cannot come where Peace is not given."