Dear Friends,
When Sutra dancers were requested to perform in the newly constructed temple adjacent to the main building of Brahma Vidyaranyam complex of Dhyana Ashram, Kulim, we unanimously felt it was a golden opportunity to connect with a major spiritual centre of the Ashram. This we could not refuse and consider it a blessing and privilege of the highest order.
The Sai Dakshinamurthy Temple was designed within a hexagonal space with Lord Siva in the form of Dakshinamurthy, installed in the centre as the main deity, flanked by Goddess Kamakshi on His left, and Lord Ganesha on His right. On the extreme left is Lord Muruga and on the extreme right is the revered Avatar and Guru, Sai Baba.
Dakshinamurthy is considered as AdiGuru and AdiYogi and usually presides in ashrams.
That morning, Sutra dancers woke up early. On the previous day they had travelled by bus from Kuala Lumpur to Kulim and had to be on a performance mode the very evening. Radhe! Radhe!, their performance in the same evening was danced to a full-house audience.
For the newly installed temple, the next morning, we decided to perform to the slokas dedicated to Ganesha, Durga and finally to pay homage, fittingly, to Lord Siva.
For the devotees, the icons are anthropomorphic symbols of the highest principles; the murti/icon basically assumes the supreme and collective metaphors of the best principles of human values. The ‘gods’, as such, are gifted with the very things that money can’t buy – fragrant incense and colourful flowers, the elements in their pure forms, poetry, music and of course, dance. (As an artist, I find this an amazing manner to express one’s art & creativity. This concept of devotion in human tradition has manifested into great Art.)
For a dancer, it is even more dramatic! He or she becomes a moving ‘leaf’ (patra), a veritable living, moving temple, where the whole sacrifice would take place; where dance/music/beauty are simultaneously enacted to become gifts of the highest order for this pure spirit that not only is iconically anthropormophise in front, but more intensely, that which resides within the dancer, himself/herself.
This is the spirit of godliness, divinity and spirituality that Dance gives to the Temple/Space, that Swami Brahmananda spoke about.
When the dancer is subsumed into the Dance, the space becomes blessed and consecrated and both the audience and dancers experience the heightened state of ‘rasa’ and achieving collective moksha (the liberation from the ‘so muchness’ of everyday life), there and then.
As we did feel that morning!
Sutra