The Weekly Grind: Bharatanatyam

Welcome to The Weekly Grind: the Bharatanatyam edition. I'm going to try and post weekly after each dance class, Fridays for Bharatanatyam and Saturdays for Kathak. So welcome to the first ever post...

I am now thoroughly exhausted and am writing this whilst my thighs slowly give up on everything, if you've ever sat in araimandi you know exactly what I'm talking about! Passion and love for an ancient art however always weighs out the pain! After a bharatanatyam hair discussion (oh dance talk!) class eventually started. So a run a through of today's activities you ask? But of course!...

To begin with, the Alarippu. In essence if you start with this piece in your practice then you can let you arms die a little later on (Y). After setting fire to our arms we moved on to the Ganesha Vandana, I don't know if every school of bharatanatyam has this piece but we do, I actually like this piece a lot but after the Alarippu it's a bit of a killer and I always manage to go wrong somewhere! Followed then by my favourite piece, the Thodayam, I have actually managed to survive performing this solo, so I really do quite like it. If you don't follow the Kalamandalam school then the Thodayam is basically the Pushpanjali. This is probably one of the only dances I've managed to pretty much commit to muscle memory, yay! Seven girls from my class are performing on the 29th, their piece is the Mooshika Vahana, or more correctly, the Deva Stuti, so we went through that a few times. I'm still not getting it all right, especially when portraying Goddess Lakshmi, perhaps I'm just not cut out to be wealthy. (See what I did there? ;D ) Then we eventually moved on to the piece we are currently learning; the Mallari. 

I've decided that I have a love-hate relationship with the Mallari. So far I think it's one of my favourite bharatanatyam choreographies but equally it does kill me. I've somehow already learnt the words by heart, and can easily spend a whole day listening to the music over and over again. We still haven't finished learning it but I don't think there is too much left, (he says hopefully.) Luckily for me (and the rest of the class) there are two adults in my class, both amazing dancers and both having studied Bharatanatyam years ago, who always pick up the choreographies, hence they tend to be stationed either in the middle of the class or at either end. Hilariously today when one of them quickly went to get something a somewhat panicked "hey, where's aunty?!" was heard xD

So all in all another great but tiring class. I'm also even more looking forward to being bharatanatyam hair guru for the evening on the 29th! Early start at 10.30 for Kathak class tomorrow, sleep beckons I believe. I will eventually get around to posting about my rehearsal earlier today at some point!