I approached Indian dance and India from a question: what relationship exists between the Sacred and Dance? I came from a context in which dance was - and to some extent still is - perceived, at least conceptually, as something distant from the sacred and spirituality. For this very reason, I was interested in exploring contexts in which different narratives and models emerged, capable of revealing a deeper connection between gesture, body and spiritual dimension.
Antonella Usai, progetto Aeras per MAO — Museo d’Arte Orientale, TorinoThis journey of research, constantly balancing between bodily practice and intellectual enquiry, opened up an extremely broad and meaningful horizon, awakening a thirst for knowledge and a pleasure for the very act of research that proved, in some ways, inexhaustible.
The path has favoured journeys between different visions and cultures, avoiding unilateral directions or one-way routes, and has been articulated through a continuous operation of translation. The initial research on the founding myths of western theatre - conducted, at the time, under the guidance of Roberto Tessari's acute gaze - was transformed, moving from ancient Greece to India, into a comparative analysis and a necessary in-depth study of certain key words: Body, Body and Feminine, Mythology, Decolonial. An investigation aimed at understanding the origins of those epochal changes that have redefined, in a profound way, the ‘connotations’ of the world, both in the East and in the West.
It is from these premises that the curatorship of FOCUS INDIA within CROSS Festival was born. The format was conceived with a trans-sectorial and transcultural slant, in line with the festival's very vocation, and with particular attention to the involvement - as far as possible - of a multi-generational audience. The proposals were deliberately sought in different areas, involving languages not only related to classical Indian dance, but also to western theatre, martial arts, contemporary dance, music and visual art.
Far from being an incorruptible monolith, every tradition, in order to remain alive, needs interchange, porosity, contamination, questioning and dialogue with other outlooks. The great Indian choreographer Chandralekha lost no opportunity to reiterate this very concept, proposing a vision of Indian tradition that is anything but monolithic or impermeable:
"Within this cosmology, the arts and sciences are also interdependent and there is a wealth of reciprocal references between science and art.Dance, music, architecture, sculpture, yoga, medicine, linguistic disciplines, grammar are not isolated, nor are they mutually exclusive.
This is the broader meaning of “tradition”: to be integral, integrated, intact, whole."
Chandralekha (dancer, 1928 - 2006)
Chandralekha, 1994If the profound meaning of a tradition is indeed this, it would be worth reading and re-reading these few lines, to recognise their revolutionary scope and value. And to understand more deeply from what kind of outlook and experience such dense words spring.
In this case, the experience is that of a dancer-choreographer-intellectual-social activist, who has made research on the body and the sacred value intrinsic to the dancing body the heart of her life. Beyond any dogmatism, be it religious or political, the dancing body is configured as that primary unity capable of speaking of the Sacred in its most authentic sense: as the original capacity to experience Unity in the Multiple, Coherence in Diversity. A body that moves - and informs - within that Unified Field described by the most recent research in contemporary physics.
It is not surprising, then, that CERN in Geneva is home to a two-metre statue depicting Shiva Nataraja, the dancing hypostasis of the Hindu god to whom the Indian dance is dedicated. That figure, symbolically placed in the realm of Science, carries with it a sophisticated representation that associates the movement of subatomic particles - and Life itself - with a cosmic dance. The vision that emerges is that of a circular motion of eternal creation and destruction, in which the primary elements dance between empty and full, positive and negative.
One of the most fascinating and, at the same time, complex aspects of classical Indian dance—and one that clearly illustrates what has been said above—is the language of the so-called hasta mudra, or hand gestures. This is an extremely elaborate code that informs not only the choreographic aesthetic universe, but also the iconographic, religious, and ritual traditions of all of India and Southeast Asia. Often, the right hand and the left hand perform different gestures simultaneously. For example, to represent the god Shiva, the right hand takes the position of the drum, while the left hand shows the fire.
During training, integrating this knowledge proves to be extremely complex and requires great effort, as it feels as though the mind resists allowing the two hands to perform different gestures at the same time. As technical training progresses, it is not only the body that begins to change and become more flexible, but above all the mind. It represents a true revolution in the way of thinking and seeing the world—a practical experience of concepts expressed by non-dual philosophy or even modern science. And all of this begins with the body and the hands, within a worldview that considers them genuine instruments for understanding the world and the profound reality of Being.
Dance, in this vision, becomes the sacred language par excellence, an instrument capable of revealing realities that only the most advanced technologies are now beginning to detect and demonstrate.
Our present makes it more urgent than ever to create interfaces between science and mysticism, but also between science, politics and art. A profound, we might say epic, crossing.
What role can dance play in all this today?
The hope - quoting Chandralekha again - is that our spinal columns will once again become metaphors for freedom, and that the body will once again be conceived and experienced as a unity, in relation to itself, society and the cosmos. For this to happen, dance will necessarily have to emancipate itself from kinship with terms such as spectacle, entertainment, virtuosity, seduction, titillation. It will have to return to its original nature, ‘all about evoking energy and human dignity in an increasingly brutal and violence-laden environment.’
Antonella Usai is a dancer, choreographer, researcher and relational artist. She lives in Val Susa where she created Terra NAD, a place to explore the relationship between dance, yoga and systemic vision. She is a resident artist at MAO (Museum of Oriental Art, Turin) and a consultant for Hangar Piemonte, the Cultural Transformation Agency of the Piedmont Region.
A journey into the aura of key practices and figures of spirituality and performance art between body, gesture and vision.
