The story begins about two weeks ago, when dance lovers were given a compelling reason to rejoice. A kind soul uploaded the entire film Bala (1976), by Satyajit Ray, on YouTube.

Young artistes are often rewarded with scholarships and fellowships that further their training, but there are few awards that recognise them as practitioners making a valuable contribution to the arts they have pursued. In this direction, the Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar instituted by the Sangeet Natak Akademi in 2006 is an important step towards opening up the arts and making young performing artistes feel more welcome by acknowledging their significance.

Today, I wish to address a topic that is very personal, especially for male dancers. I know so many male dancers, who dance beautifully with very smart and classy form, be it western or Indian dances, they known it all. However, a major cause for concern that they have is dance costumes, especially when they have a hairy chest, hands or legs. If a male dancer has to expose his strong torso for an Indian dance sequence or his well-toned legs for a contemporary performance, he is as conscious of his body hair, as a woman would be of her upper lip or hairy hands.

Sandip Soparrkar

A dancer is a dancer it is said, but today with over 30 years of dance experience behind me, I can guess a dancer’s personality by simply knowing what television serials they often like to watch. Whether it’s respite from a hectic day, or a sad excuse for a social life, what you flip on to watch in your free time says a surprising lot about you as a dancer. Your fixation towards a certain kind of programming, not including the sports and music genres owing to the mass appeal, can reveal interesting insights into your dancer personality type. So figure out where your dancer TRP stands.

Think Indian dance, and one coherent image of its antecedents in sculpture is the Harappan “dancing girl”. One arm resting on her hip, she confronts you, sparks of impudence inscribed on every inch of her person. Found in Mohenjodaro and dating back to over 4,500 years, she is but a tiny bronze statuette the length of one’s palm.
Many girls train in classical dance at some point in their childhoods. One hears murmurs about men not being suited to dance or dance styles; it is seemingly more plausible for a woman to take to dance. It is this implicit acceptance that should bring us to question the order of things even more. That she was “born to dance” leaves a lot to the imagination. What are the paths that lead women to dance?

Sandip Soparrkar

I’ve often seen how most of the students who come to learn dance merrily forget about dance etiquetttes or rather off-the floor courtesy in other words. We forget that dance is not just about pirouetting or twirling and having a woman sway in your arms. It goes beyond that and is a means to develop oneself emotionally, physically and socially. Dance gives you a medium to learn and unlearn many concepts.

There is both a black swan and a white swan, juxtaposed inside us. The dark, grey feathers epitomise the evil side of a human character. While the hoary plumes reflect the goodness of soul. Aren’t we aware that our mind is a constitution profane vices and holy virtues? Hypothetically, weigh them on different pans and just see them hanging in equal balance. This continuous tussle between good and evil is an age-old dilemma, which every man has to cope up with till his last breath.

On a pleasant, breezy Wednesday afternoon, thirty-year-old Rasta Thomas, the “bad boy” of dance, speaking on the phone from the Pink City of Jaipur where he’s opening his six-city India tour, sounds buoyantly upbeat and unmistakably excited. He has a reason to be rosy: In the evening, he is all set to take Jaipur down a staggering dancing lane at the Birla Auditorium. We speak a few hours after he and his dancer wife, Adrienne Canterna (both vegetarian), had relished dal, aloo gobhi and palak paneer, washed down with sweet lassi. “This is the best breakfast I ever had,” he told his mother, who accompanies him on the tour.

Sandip Soparrkar

The dance floor, especially ones found in pubs and night clubs, has always been a litmus test for any dancer to show off his/her skills. The small dancing platform, which is usually flooded with people, is actually the perfect place to test a dancer’s etiquette. Good dance is not just the only thing that will make you shine on the floor. It is important to develop good social skills as a dancer if you want to be a popular person at a party and keep a lasting impression on people.

The year 2012 is a year of many approximations. It began with the question of censorship being raised at the Jaipur Literature Festival. More unassumingly, it marks the sixtieth death anniversary of Bangalore Nagarathnamma, an important Carnatic musician and devadasi in the early 20th century. Also, placing these facts in the context of censorship, it is a hundred years since her edition of the Telugu courtesan Muddupalani’s erotic poem Radhika Santwanam (Appeasing Radhika) was banned.