Graceful movements of Indian dance, music frozen in time

Indian sculpture celebrates the divine in the forms of Gods and Goddesses as also the man mostly as divine manifestation.  “Art is the creation of beauty,” says Will Durant.  “It is the expression of thought or feeling in a form that seems beautiful and sublime.”  The Indian aesthetic tradition implies close relationship between the visual and performing arts, particularly dance, music and drama, which have always played an important part in India’s religious and social life.

Traditionally, Indian dance is a display of grace in motion and rhythm.  One can easily recognise the profound influence exerted by the classical art of dance on sculpture.  Particular themes from the dancers’ repertoire have been portrayed in sculptures where the underlying rhythm is essentially similar to the dancer’s rhythm.  Frozen in stone, there is a display of movements of every part of the human frame from head to toe.  Working though rhythmic body swings, the dancer creates a vocabulary of hand gestures, of eyes as well as facial expressions for the portrayal of moods, emotions, sentiments, actions and ideas.

The dancer creates an ambience where the theme, the song and the rhythm all combine to produce a particular emotion or sentiment (rasa).  Indian temples all over the country are adorned with panels depicting graceful dancing figures in voluptuous splendor and musicians playing their instruments.

Strikingly sculptural in conception and execution, these temples incorporate the whole spectrum of Indian culture and represent a universe carved in stone.  For the sculptors, the creation of these immortal images was itself considered an act of worship.

They have captured in stone what could not be recorded in words.  A study of the portrayal of dancers and musicians shows that the sculptors possessed knowledge of the art of dance and its codification as found in Natya Shastru, a treatise on dance.

A story, mentioned in one of the texts on Aesthetics, narrates how a king asked his teacher to guide him to make sculpture.  But it is obligatory to know the rules of painting first, the king was told.  When he requested to be taught painting, the teacher pointed out that it was difficult to follow the rules of painting without understanding the technique of dancing followed by music.  In essence, the story highlights the fact that all the Indian arts are components of a single spectrum of expression signifying the role of unity in art.

The dance is one of the highest forms of representation of divine powers in Indian art and it is seen in the portrayal of Lord Shiva’s role as Nataraja, the lord of dance.  His dance symbolised an ecstasy of motion, the rhythm of which holds the universe together, perpetuating the cosmic activities of Creation, Preservation and Destruction.  The holy seat of Nataraja is the magnificent temple of Chidambaram.  There are a series of panels on the inner walls depicting dancers in 108 different poses, along with descriptive texts from the Natya Sastra.  With their feet posed in dance stamping the rhythm of their music, these figures are marvelous works of art full of life and movement.  The wealth of sculptures is education for the dancers and serves as a term of reference for the revival of classical dance form in the thirties of the last century.  

The cave at Aurangabad (6th century AD) are renowned for a group of reliefs, which depict a dance scene.  The dancer in the middle of a sensual pose seems to be lost in a reverie.  She is surrounded by a bevy of women playing musical instruments.  One of them is playing a bamboo flute, which is still quite common in rural India.

The Dilwara temples at Mt. Abu in Rajasthan (11th-13th century AD) according to Col James Tod, “are the most superb of all temple in India.”  All the interiors display a magic world of white marble carved with a profusion of detail with infinite patience and skill which surpasses anything seen elsewhere.  The dancing figures on the pillars are veritable dreams of beauty.

The most marvelous sculptures portraying the joy of living, are to be  found at the world famous Khajuraho temples built by the Chandela kings (10th – 13th century AD).  One is astounded by the competence of the artists who made the stone pulsate with life passion.  The figures are full of warmth and sheer ecstasy of living in the beautiful world.  Movement dominates the sculptures of dancers and musicians whose beauty and grace have been captured in different moods.

We also come across exquisitely carved friezes and sculptures showing dancers and musicians in a number of other temples such as the colossal temple of Konark, devoted to the Sun God, Ramappa temple at Palampet, Mahadev temple near Sikat, temples in Bhubaneshwar and Puri, Brihadeshwara temple at Tanjore and one is Darasuram.  The last one is the most evocative in Chola art and its fascinating figures dancing in graceful poses suggest Nityavinoda, perpetual entertainment or eternal music and dance.  Invariably, the graceful nude bodies are adorned with a variety of ornaments, which not only heighten their charm but also serve as draperies.

The amazing bounty of sculptures portraying rhythm and melody through enchanting images of dancers and musicians dazzles the observer with their unsurpassed beauty and grandeur and baffles him with their varied complexity.  Though the figures do not move, they are full of latent mobility as if infused with elemental energy.