In the time of Kaliyug, when the need of the hour is to spiritualise society, the role of the householder seeker is a crucial one. Juggling career, family, multiple relationships and traffic jams, the householder must bloom like the proverbial lotus in the muck of everyday life More>>
Theater and dance are two of the major performing arts. And both have a deeper,
more therapeutic and spiritual import that was first highlighted in the ancient
texts of Bharat Muni's Natya Shastra and Aristotle's Poetics. Over centuries,
as dance and drama developed, from court theater and fertility foot-tapping through
convention-defying group theater and jazz to the subtleties of method-acting and
contemporary dance, the two have flowered to encompass all complexities of human
psychology.
A unique double-interview with experts from both dance and
theater sheds more light on how the two forms can help improve your life. While
Indian theater guru Barry John discusses educative and psycho-therapeutic angles
of theater with Gaurav Raina, ace choreographer Shiamak Davar speaks with
Anupama Bhattacharya about how he uses dance as a form of therapy for channeling
energies.
BARRY
JOHN
What is unique
to drama compared to other fine arts? Theater is a social endeavor.
Fine arts, such as painting and sculpture, are solitary pursuits.
Theater has more in common with sport—it requires a collective team effort
where each participant has an assigned role. It also represents a synthesis of
other arts—music, painting, writing and dance.
What
is theater's creative scope vis-a-vis cinema? Films are a recent
development. But theater is as old as civilization and is found in all
cultures. In fact, the roots of drama are religious. It was a sacred part of the
community, the entire belief system. Cinema is the result of a variety
of deceptions—technological and otherwise. There is a lot of earnest preparation
and rehearsal in theater, with respect for detail. In a play you are able
to visualize the entire story and thus pitch your performance. In cinema,
the continuity is broken as scenes are not enacted in the same sequence as the
script.
How does drama enrich human relationships? Most people,
especially the young, enjoy theater because despite being practical and
physical, it also involves emotions and feelings. Positive education in relationships
is essential to enable people to handle responsibilities and understand others.
Drama teaches a person to be sensitive to others, to be more refined in
verbal communication. You learn to work with others and accept criticism.
Can an actor keep himself apart from his character without diluting the
intensity of identification? Ideally, an actor must be at least
10 per cent separate from his
character to remain in touch with reality. It is important to know where
to draw the line because it is practically impossible to be completely submerged
into the personality of your character. At the same time, it is an immensely
deep learning experience to be somebody else. For example, Ben Kingsley went
to great lengths to be Gandhi for Richard Attenborough's film. Even when he would
stay overnight in a hotel during a shoot, he would remove all the furniture from
the room, sleep on the floor, wear a dhoti and stick to a vegetarian diet. However,
this method-acting approach can become disturbing when a negative character
such as a murderer or a rapist has to be played. But even here, to be able to
identify with the character and yet remain abstracted can be a challenging experience.
Can theater help manage psychological problems? Definitely. Theater
as a form of therapy can be sheer magic. In psychodrama, for example, we
encourage a distressed person to tell his story. The effect is extremely cathartic.
Then, the person is made to act it out step by step and develop the courage to
perform the reasons for his problems—why he failed his exams or gave up his job.
In the process, the person analyses his problem, and even directs others to act
his part. When you see yourself being played by others, you can visualize yourself
objectively.
Do you recommend dramatics for schools? Drama
makes us realize that we are not a uniform species. Solutions to problems are
not necessarily right or wrong. Nothing in life is black and white. The performing
arts appreciate the child's individuality. Drama is interested in you
the person. It encourages you to be creative, to make your own choices.
Theater is about empowerment, and it empowers you for life.
Can
theater educate and entertain at the same time? A good play teaches
you how to live. Why do we gossip, listen to news, or watch jealous lovers? We
all have an innate curiosity. Theater gives you a peep into other lives
and can provide valuable moral instruction. Every minute of our life, we are acting.
Consciously or unconsciously, we modify our language, attitudes, gestures and
expressions depending on who we are dealing with. Actually, the only difference
between everyday life and theater is that formal acting is public.
Acting and direction require self-observation and observation of
others. An actor needs to know what is happening inside him emotionally, and then
be in control of it. This mastery can even be extended to daily life.
How did theater help develop your personality? I have always found
it a privilege to be an actor. The work has incorporated almost all my
interests. I usually designed my own plays and shifted from acting
to set designing to direction and finally to training actors.
I even ventured beyond theater and applied it to social work. Theater
is a dynamic field. Every new play introduces you to a new self. There
is complete transformation and an entirely new world of thinking and behaving
opens up. Theater also helps you develop an insight into human nature.
Yet, it never gets clinical. I am able to perceive people at another level. In
a sense, the art of acting makes you a little clairvoyant.
SHIAMAK
DAVAR
How
do you relate to your spiritual inclinations
as a dancer?
For me, dancing is a way of life. I believe in
God, the cosmic balance and balance of nature, astral energies. I also believe
that life itself is a stage, a preparation for something better. But you can't
do anything unless your body, mind and spirit are healthy. Which is where dance
comes in. It is a great therapy.
But how does it heal? It's
not just dance. Whether you walk, run or swim, the most important thing
is body as a release factor. If you are sad, tears come out, if you laugh, your
stomach moves, when you are terrified, your body shakes. The mind has its external
manifestations. If you have anything negative inside you, if you're feeling angry,
jealous, sad, depressed—the body reacts and you get headaches, body aches. So
even if you are feeling down in the dumps, it helps to go out, cycle, jog, walk
or dance. Today there is a lot of negativity in the air. The world is going
through a major crisis and the energies are getting chaotic. Whatever positive
energy each one of us can add counts. There are many things around us that don't
fall into our limited framework of thought and preconceived notions. So we reject
them outright. Once, I saw a UFO...
A UFO? Difficult to believe, but it's true. That was in Bombay.
But nobody would believe me when I talked about it. Everybody rejected it as a
schoolboy's imagination. I believe in aliens. They are here to help earthlings.
But we have to be prepared to receive them.
Can dance be used for
relaxation? Absolutely. When you dance, two things happen. One
is you learn an art form—which is most important, since it provides an
outlet to your creativity. The other thing is the fitness factor. Without
fitness you cannot dance. Unless the body is in shape, you cannot have
good coordination. Dancing gives you the freedom of movement.
How would you define your dance? I try to do a lot of things. I use
jazz, chhau (an Indian tribal dance form), Sufi, modern,
ballet, and I have my own style. It is basically an amalgamation of various
positive steps. People know when they see my choreography that it is a
Shiamak step. I'm doing what I feel movement should look like.
How
do dance forms affect us? As far as I am concerned, dance is dance.
It doesn't matter whether you move your head this way or that or shake a leg left
or right. A hip movement is a hip movement. You can call it western, Indian or
ballet. But if you are a good dancer, you will imbibe everything.
See, an actor can't go on doing just happy roles. He also has to
do a lot of sad roles to be a complete actor. And each of these roles
hone your perception of the human psyche.
But there must be a difference
somewhere... In jazz, the movement is outward flowing. In ballet
it's more controlled energy and leg-oriented work. Jazz is absolutely free, you
can release a lot of energies, just like in modern dance. Ballet
is more orthodox, more stereotyped. In most classical dances, there is
a lot of restriction: you cannot do this, you cannot do that. That teaches discipline.
In my dance, there is freedom. I use a bit of kathak (an
Indian dance form), a bit of modern dance and fuse them to create the best
release factor.
How
do you use dance as a release factor? There are many unhappy people in
the world, especially children. And if you don't give them guidelines from the
beginning, they start having what you call the ripple effect. Children and teenagers
have an immense store of energies which they often release into destructive channels
such as drugs, sex and rock 'n' roll. The negativity they release in the process
affects others who further release more negativity in the world. What we must
do is help them properly channel their energies whilst they are still young and
impressionable into an art form.
Should schools incorporate
dancing into their curriculum? Definitely. Outside India, many schools
are already using these techniques to channel energies. They teach music so children
can understand maths. When you learn music, you learn adding, subtracting.
When you make people do something they are interested in, then they are focused
on it.
Does dancing help in your quest for the Self? It is
only when you experience pain that you understand the true meaning of happiness.
To mould steel, you have to put it through fire. That's where the right channeling
of energies comes in. Dancing hones your body, disciplines your mind and
sharpens your aesthetic sense. Each one of us is born with a purpose. My mission
is to help people through dance and I always try to fulfill that.
ue
to drama compared to other fine arts? 
his
character to remain in touch with reality. It is important to know where
to draw the line because it is practically impossible to be completely submerged
into the personality of your character. At the same time, it is an immensely
deep learning experience to be somebody else. For example, Ben Kingsley went
to great lengths to be Gandhi for Richard Attenborough's film. Even when he would
stay overnight in a hotel during a shoot, he would remove all the furniture from
the room, sleep on the floor, wear a dhoti and stick to a vegetarian diet. However,
this method-acting approach can become disturbing when a negative character
such as a murderer or a rapist has to be played. But even here, to be able to
identify with the character and yet remain abstracted can be a challenging experience.
clinations
as a dancer? 
How
do you use dance as a release factor? 
