Dance from the feminine

The title of this piece is borrowed from a brochure on a dance school I chanced upon, which promised an innovative method to dance and rediscover one’s own body dynamics through dancing.

I don’t know how well the programme has been received among Malayalees who would rather claim their five seconds of fame in the limelight, piggy riding on the often mediocre talent of their children through youth festivals. It is common knowledge that parents are ready to part with a sizeable chunk of their bank balance just to get their kids trained in some form of dancing that would win a trophy. This trophy is no less primitive as the trophies cavemen used to bring home after a war - human beings benumbed into slaves.

Anyway, this thought is not on dance. It is more about what goes into it. It is also about Siddha tradition of medicine and Kalari Payattu, perhaps the most ancient martial art known to humans. More precisely, about human anatomy, its dynamics and the optimal state a body can assume. There’s more than mere muscles, sinews and tissues involved here. I have been taught that each constitution is as distinct and unique as a thumb print, and it’s my wager that most dance teachers around can’t even tell whether a dance student is more of Pitha, or Vatha or Kapha constitution, following the Indian yoga tradition. Certain western systems have been inspired by the eastern traditions and have formed body sensing methods, and have been peddling that in India - a laughable irony. While we can gently brush that aside as another fad, the fact remains that dancing as a physical ex-pression demands certain technical awareness about the inner architecture of a human body. Usually, a well-trained Kalari Guru can easily identify a student’s constitution from the first few steps and design a curriculum according to that - reason why some Kalari schools extract so many years of training  from certain students. This is closely associated with the Siddha tradition of medicine: in Siddha, these three constitutions, along with myriad other parameters, are what drives a human being into certain states. For example, excess Pitha in body can cause extreme aggression that manifests in twelve ( I believe) ways. That’s why Tamil calls a madman ‘Paaithyakkaaran’ - a man who has excess pitha. Pitha pushed by Vatha can create terrific fighters, but unless that’s grounded in Kapha, which is slow and steady, the fighting stamina won’t last. It’s a very delicate balancing act. The same may be said about dancing. Krishna Shabdam in Kuchippudi, for example, is just as swift and riveting as a lusty love making. No slow movements, no space for silence to gauge the audience’s reaction, no time to replay. The only replay is another fast sequence of the same pallavi or charanam. So, when a teacher trains a student in this particular piece, he or she should first get in an insight into the generics of the student’s composition. A Kapha-dominated pupil would be never be able to do justice to it. But she or he can definitely do ballet - grounded, balanced, measured movements that go in whirling motion.

Looking under the surface you discover even more amazing secrets about body in motion. In Kalari, after a certain stage, a dedicated student can easily shed the first sheath in Yoga called Anna Maya Kosha - meaning, he or she can go without three meals a day to train, say, five hours every day. The second sheath, called Prana Maya Kosha, that’s body’s own unique reservoir of energy - what athletes call the second wind - takes over. From there on, the practice assumes an easiness, a natural flow. The body is directed by Prana. Sometimes you actually forget that you have a body and sometimes, the breath completely stops. This happens especially in Mey Payattu, where blocks and blows are delivered with such hair raising speed, that there’s absolutely no time to think about one’s own body. Only breathing is noticed.

Here, the term dancing from the feminine has a relevance. Traditionally, in all patriarchal societies, women have been perceived as passive. Yet, some of the most potent martial art forms are passive. Kalari Chuvadu, for example, are passive movements, observing the opponent’s moves and receiving his energy patterns. No resistance is offered - it’s like the ebb of an ocean: you venture into it, the sea receives you and drags you down into its fathomless depths. Women seem to be more receptive to this idea than men. I remember an evening in Kochi, taking two tiny kids from an alien land to the sea in Fort Kochi. The boy, though aggressive otherwise, suddenly fell quiet and apprehensive at the sight of the ocean. The girl, slightly elder, just went into the water as if it was her element, holding onto my hand. Ditto with their parents - the father instantly built a macho wall around him, silently proclaiming that such mundane things like stepping into the sea was beneath him. The mother, just stood on the shore, watching, watching. I was watching her and I could see all Vata - air. She knew that once she stirred up the water, it would be a tsunami...she was an accomplished dancer herself. But not quite aware of her own inner pathways.

Unless dancing is blended with a thorough knowledge of interior workings of the body, no dancer can ever achieve that state called ecstacy. And that’s exactly the aim of every body-related art: happiness, without any external reference point like an object, a value, a situation. Be it martial art or dance, after a good practise session, if this feeling doesn’t swell up inside your entire being, that’s the benchmark that there’s room for debugging. For that, meditation is the definitive way. Vipassana, in particular, seems to be a promising technique in this regard. The few times I have been through Vipassana sessions have proved to be faster and finer in experiential wisdom than any other. Together, Kalari, meditation and Siddha tradition, can turn around the art of dancing into the real ritual it is meant to be: Dhyana, and finally, liberation. When you practise selective wisdom, you look uninspiring on stage. Embrace the entire body of arcane knowledge that was tested and proven through trial and error through eons, you become a forest fire that blazes through the psyche of the audience, making the session perhaps a life transforming moment.

It’s my personal wish that all men should learn to dance. And discover the feminine within. Feminine that’s described in so many Tantric texts as Sakthi. Sakthi, force, that sucks in the energy of the living moment and alchemise it into a path of power. Moral, physical and spiritual power. Then, you will not need much else. As Kalari says, when you practise Verum Kai, that’s weaponless combat, your aura becomes so big that people sense it and give way to you, no matter how small you look. But once you learn to protect yourself under a small shield against a lethal shower of blows from a one kilogram blade, crouching like a tiger, soon your aura shrinks at will: you pass by like a shadow on the street, unnoticed by the world - which is how Ninjas, notorious for sneaking in through any reinforcement, find and kill their victims. Your hara - Prana - becomes a lasso in your hand with which you can rope in attention at will or let go. Dancing from the feminine, in my humble opinion should attempt it, even if for the sake of a fad.

The bridge between body and the awareness is always the nose. Breathing is the rope that you use to grope around in the dark labyrinths of your sub conscious, manoeuver the swamps and demons, exorcise your past, light up a lamp in all the corners of that sacred space, perform your Manasa Puja to your Sakthi there and come back, using the same breath rope. Once the rope is severed in the process, you are struck, perhaps forever in the labyrinth - which is why so many authentic gurus advise against fifteen minute kriya yoga programmes. It isn’t easy. The Chuvadu in Kalari called Bali Chuvadu, actually comes from this experience: Bali, who asked Sugreeva to tie a knot around his waist before going into the cave to slay the demon, was caught up in the cave because Sugreeva had untied the rope, acting rather stupidly.  Bali had to negotiate the way back using his breath alone. Hence the name Bali Chuvadu. It’s complex. Forever shifting like the sands of a desert dune, feeling, feeling around for a chink in the armor of the opponent’s defense. In that way, it’s a feminine form of Chuvadu.

Tantra is closely associated with all these aspects of moving the body towards perfection. Through learning to manipulate prana, the tantric dances the tandava, free from all the fetters body has been taught from the reptilian brain. Such as there’s gravity, body is a mass, body is opaque etc. Of course, this is another topic, but close in nature to dancing. A dedicated student of dance or martial art should learn the basics of this: in fact it’s a closely guarded secret that in Kalari, after the highest stages, qualified students are initiated into Mantras for application in certain Marmas.

In Tantra, Shiva and Sakthi are of equal importance. Akulavira, the ancient text on Tantra takes a very radical but entirely typical stance, saying that the Akulavira, elsewhere described as the Parampadam (the supreme part) and the Sahajanandam (spontaneous bliss), alone gives liberation. It is identical with the guru. Akula, as Bagchi points out, is Shiva, the witness while Kula is
Shakti, the cluster of energies. In a remarkable verse (56), it is said that the path of the Kaula is of two types - the artificial (kritaka) and the sahaja (spontaneous). The real or Sahaja
is that in which Samarasa resides.

“Tantric view of Moksha.— Moksha, in the tantric sense of the word, is the unfoldment of powers brought about by the self-realization. It is not the giving up of the mortal coil and thus acquiring immunity from death. To a real Tantric, birth and death are phenomena of his own creation. He finds gratification as much in the one as in the other (cf. Bhairavastotra of Abhinava Gupta). He is the Bhairava whose name even strikes terror into the destructive agencies and at whose sweet will the world lives, moves and has its being. His sole article of faith is that death has significance only for those who are subject to mortality and not for those who have risen superior to its idea by their living belief in the deathlessness of the soul (cf. Tantraloka p. 192, vol. I)

Dancing from the feminine has two facets: one, a deeply political ideology - but getting involved in a polemic about that would be explosive, since it’s all about territorial hegemony - the male and the female terrorism. And  dictatorial power as described insightfully by neo-marxian researchers. It is my personal experience that most art teachers are extremely dictatorial in temperament - to the point of obsession. Perhaps this has something to do with an over working of the right hemisphere. A little crossword puzzle everyday for ten minutes should help.

The other side is the metaphysical, still controversial, but rewarding in the long run. Ideological coffee tables never helped anyone experience a cup of Java. For that, learning is the priority for the modern dance and body-architects. It is a deep gold mine of ex-pression, waiting to be unearthed, if you have your ropes, ponies, sidebags, shovels, Omar Sheriff and Gregory Peck ready. But who is interested, other than a few rich, indo-anglicized upper caste unemployeds who can afford the luxury of running a school that always makes Ekalavya stand outside the wall and peep through the wall to learn. And finally chop off his very core skill to compensate for being a Dalit...As long as dancing is monopolized by Menons and Nambiars and Chakiars and Thamburans, it will never liberate itself, as Marxism said, from the shackles it has tied itself around with.