Toastmasters Project Speech 5: Dance Away

Martha Graham, the famous American Choreographer, popularly known as the mother of American Dance once said that ‘Dance is the hidden language of not just the body, but of the soul’

To me, dance is indeed a form of communication, not just between two people, but it’s one of the best medium of communication between us and our inner self.

Good Evening Friends and welcome to the Toastmaster’s open house.

Listen.. listen carefully.. listen to the silence. Don’t you feel that there is a music in this silence too? Its odd that even this silence makes me want to dance! And I am still yet to figure out why! I am sure most of you must have gone through that phase when you just feel like dancing. That mood or even that moment might come when you are taking a shower, you are in a club, or you are just standing in the rain.. the scene differs but the mood to dance doesn’t go away.

So what is there about dance that even young babies learn to dance before they can sing or write? Is there something more to dance than what just meets the eye?

One speciality of dance has been that, just like music, dance is so interwoven with our culture that more often it is almost our culture. Prehistoric documents claim that courtroom dancing might have existed since the time there have been kings and queens. Throughout history people have danced as a part of religious rituals and social celebrations.

Its fascinating to notice how different each dance is from the other and how each dance reflects the beauty of the region it hails from. For starters, in Chinese traditional courtroom dance, some dancers depict the martial art while some dancers like to educate the audiences based on the rituals of the country. In the Chinese dance form, there is a lot of emphasis on the hand and eye co-ordination. But to me what I find the most beautiful thing about the traditional Chinese dance is the extensive use of props which are so elegantly co-ordinated with stylized steps and gestures.

The idea of depicting the rituals of the country in dance is often a very common thing to do. In the middle eastern countries, in the olden days, men used to take swords, sticks or rifles and dance depicting the wars that had plagued the middle eastern areas. However, the idea of telling the story of the country is depicted very differently in Indian classical dance. Though the stress on hand and eye co-ordination is there, there are very less props used. For example, in a dance in Southern India called Bharatnatyam meaning Dance of India, different hand gestures called the Mudras fulfill the role of having props. For example (Do Matsya) shows the Fish (Do riding the chariot) and means riding a chariot!

Fascinating what just the eyes and hands can do to tell so much to a person without much words associated with it. Like eyes and hands, sometimes the feet movement also works in telling a story. For example in the ballet, the ballerina wears the pointe shoes in order to dance on the tips of her toes. By dancing on her toes, she strives to create an illusion of weightless-ness which is achieved by rapidly skimming the floor, spinning and sustaining poses.

Sometimes exotic foot work itself has a story to tell. In the Indian dance of Kathak which means a Story teller, the dancer often takes a turn to show the change in scene or to show the change in character who is narrating the script. Kathak is another Indian dance where the movements like the ballet are very delicate.

But not all dances have such delicate motions. The African dance of Macru is done to fast tempo of scores of drums and other instruments. The most striking feature of African dance is the fact that it does not treat the body as one unit but as separate segments, so with the beat, every segment of your body is dancing making it way more complex! Macru dance is also interesting for how the dance is performed. Here the men and women form 2 single files and dance to the beats with scarfs and they just put the scarf around whomever they want to and dance with them!

So dance as we know is always a fun thing! Even for those professional dancers, they would claim that dancing is their hobby and their passion but nonetheless, its great fun. From the Salsa to the Bhangra, from Tap dance to Hip hop, dance rejuvenates us and makes us feel so much fresher. Some of the dances like the belly dance or latino dance provide some fantastic work out!

But coming back to where I started this evening, is there more to dance than just the swaying and the swinging? Personally I think there is. Why do we dance? Because we are happy. We dance to celebrate and we dance because we feel that it’s the best way to get out our joy and share it with others. Dances also represent the freedom of man to express. Through dance, various artists have conveyed some great principles and are an entertaining way to learn more about not just our culture, but also of cultures of different parts of the world.

Through the ages from the 16^th Century courtroom dancing to the 18^th century ballet to the 19^th century contemporary dance to the beats of the 20^th century, dance has always been a central part of our lives. As we usher into the 21^st century into the new age of revival of dance, lets remember that dance forms changed, dances changed, but the essence of dance never changed. So lets all dance and celebrate, celebrate the freedom to express yourself.