International Yoga Day: Odissi exponent Surupa Sen on how dance and yoga nourish the physique and the thoughts

Surupa Sen | Photo Credit: Karthik Venkatraman

Yoga and classical dance are each indigenous traditions of India that search the identical purpose — to concentrate on the breath and let the praana information each motion. To have interaction each the physique and the thoughts to behave without delay for a holistic expertise. The historic practices recommend that we pause to have interaction deeply with life, and compassionately with ourselves.

Yoga allows the mind-body steadiness that assist us make higher decisions for dwelling.

Dancers are advanced motion artistes. They must be contortionists, martial artists, poets, story tellers and sculptors . They don’t simply deliver an concept to life once they dance however create life itself in every second. As a dancer, my physique adjustments each second to stick to a complexly shifting thoughts. From the slightest quiver of a lip and the fleeting angle of the attention to the light tremble of a finger, all come collectively to precise a single nuanced emotion.

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For a dancer, the physique is a dwelling instrument. If my physique should go to locations that my thoughts seeks in its creativeness, I need to practice to stretch its potential in order that I’ll inhabit these boundless worlds. Thus when the physique, thoughts and spirit come collectively, we’ve reached our purpose.

Martha Graham, the nice up to date dancer and choreographer stated, “I’m a dancer. I imagine we be taught by apply. Whether it means to be taught dance by practising dancing or to be taught to dwell by practising dwelling”.

In the pursuit of excellence, for the previous 35 years that I’ve lived the lifetime of a dancer at Nrityagram, yoga and other forms of cross-training has been built-in into our day by day schedule. For years now, we’ve studied and developed physique kinetics that mix totally different views of coaching to particularly nourish and inform the Odissi physique. In my preliminary years as a pupil, I discovered a lacuna within the software of yoga apply to the traces of alignment inside which the Odissi dancer should operate. Most practitioners of yoga will not be dancers or essentially perceive the forces appearing on a dancer’s physique. I felt this to be the central cause for the accidents I confronted as a dancer. I subsequently tried to grasp by myself by analysis and examine methods to heal myself and to make sure that none who educated with me would undergo the identical harm. Choosing selectively from totally different types of physique work, we created a curriculum that might improve our potential as performers.

At Nrityagram, the dancers start their day with a stroll or run, then clear the gurukul areas, adopted by physique conditioning workouts. Each day is a special mannequin that should reply to the physique’s want for that specific day. In order to try this, the dancers should first put together their thoughts in order that it assimilates the physique’s wants making certain the best alternative of workouts to higher their apply for that day. Each bone and muscle should be oxygenated and lubricated to sufficiently ship on the highest stage. Once this preparation is full, an extra warm-up is finished in school earlier than the rigour of advanced dance vocabulary is undertaken. After many hours on the dance flooring, we permit the physique time to de-stress with stretches which can be fitted to every dancer to get better as shortly as attainable.

Nrityagram has been on the very forefront of building the concept the longevity of a dance profession is dependent upon the satisfactory safety and respect we should give to and have for our our bodies. Both choreographically and as performers, we’ve pushed our skills to render new dimensions of ability within the classical dance world. This, in flip, has impressed artistes to discover new and extra environment friendly methods of working each in Odissi and different dance types.

Dance traditions in India have been handed down by generations of artistes. As we gaze on the dancing figures on temple partitions, we search what they’ve — each yogic stillness and versatile physique. Yoga and dance collectively may also help us obtain this.

Though AI and bots have entered the human area and threaten to do all that we will, it can’t for now categorical what the dancer’s physique can. Until then, allow us to proceed to nourish this extraordinary instrument known as the human physique by yoga and dance.

Published – June 19, 2025 06:21 pm IST