Art is an abstract medium through which people can voice their thoughts, opinions, emotions, agony, etc. Growing up in a small village in the southern state of Kerala, in India, I was constantly surrounded by rich culture and historic art forms. Kerala is known for its traditional theatrical performances called ‘Kathakalli’, ‘Ottamthullal’, and the dance forms ‘Mohiniyattam’ and, ‘Bharathanatyam’. As bharathanatyam dancer, I perform stories including excerpts from the great Indian classics of Ramayana, Bhagavad Gita, and Mahabharata, conveying to the audience to be present with characters and the story portrayed. I like to consider these performances as a form of art because, they help the audience see a certain period of time through my movements and facial expressions. As an immigrant growing up in New York, I feel bharathanatyam helped me to be rooted in my culture, and gave clarity in knowing who I am. My perspective on art is very limited and narrow, and for this reason I want to understand different perspectives of art from different people in different places and time. I want to learn how to look at art and draw a bigger picture from a social, economic, political and a historical point of view.
Divya, your art story is very interesting. I have a friend who is trained in Kathak and Bharatanatyam. And I have seen her performing, these classical dance forms are very hard to learn but it is definitely a beautiful form of art. 🙂
The similarity in our post is that we both talked about how we can use art to tell stories. The difference is that we talked about the different form of art, Divya talked about dance and I talked about drawings and designing.