These listicles called ancient dance treatises
We all need to whittle the madness of our (dance) world down to manageable numbers. That doesn't mean that our world is just that finite; it merely means we're somewhat in control of it, temporarily
Every time I scroll down my Facebook newsfeed, I chuckle a bit. Mostly it's at my own stupid classical-dancer-type joke. Let me try to explain it (and kill it not, hopefully.)
It's funny how almost all catchy articles that we share endlessly on social media, are listicles. You know, the kind that go '8 Reasons Why You Should..' or '23 Ways To.." or 'These 16 People Will Inspire You..'. I love those random numbers, and I love it more that we believe that the mad uncertainty of our world gets sorted somewhat by these definitive numbers.
Listicles remind me of ancient treatises on classical dance - centuries-old scriptures like Natya Shastra and Abhinay Chandrika that classical dancers love to name-drop. These treatises are basically like user manuals, textbooks, rulebooks, philosophy, all rolled into one. These are what we use to validate the 'classical' in classical dance; the response it usually evokes in people is something to the effect of "oh well, kuchh toh hoga is mein, if it's been around for so frikkin' long".
However, these treatises never told us dancers about what exactly is this 'kuchh-kuchh' in dance. All of us dancers have a love-hate relationship with these dance manuals; they're so precise, and yet, they don't tell you exactly how to do things in dance. The difference between dance treatise and dancing is like googling 'sex' and then actually doing it. It's all very sorted in theory, and totally blows you off your mind when you're in the throes of it.
Funny thing is, these ancient scriptures are exactly like listicles. I could paraphrase all of NatyaShastra as a series of Buzzfeed articles on dance - "9 Emotions to Get Any Audience Interested in Your Dance". (Dancers, the answer be Rasa Theory). Or "33 Feelings That Complicate All Situations in Life" (Vyabhachari Bhavas). Or hey, "4 Things You Absolutely Can't Create Dance Without." (Cue for us all to sing, "angikang bhuvanang...")
So maybe we dancers should all use NatyShastra like we use listicles: to whittle the madness of our (dance) world down to manageable numbers. That doesn't mean that our world is just that finite; it merely means we're somewhat in control of it, temporarily, before we launch into the business of living it messily again - because hey, there's no other way to do it, right?