Into the essence

Into The Essence 

What would it have been like if Virginia Woolf had been a dancer instead ?
What would her words and ideas have looked like as movements ?

I have long been possessed by these kind of thoughts, these sorts of unending contemplation. How does the 'idea' or the concept evolve and unfold in different art forms? Each Art form, with its technicalities and specific beauty, is (according to me) in the end a medium which communicates the idea, the emotion, or the concept. Whether the idea is a traditional/mythological/inherited one, or a (supposedly) original, it is still, to me as an artist, the essence of art.
A figure painted a bluish tint, standing with legs crossed with a flute in the hands, is undeniably Krishna. Any (Indian) dancer that imitates this body language/gesture, is undoubtedly showing Krishna.
Is not the dance an image here?
Or the image the dance?
With words, the particular combination of the seven letters 'Krishna' is, well, Krishna. One need not take the strain of explaining anything further; the word itself stirs the mind with the associated images and stories.
It was for this reason that I had believed for quite a while that 'literature', or 'words' were the most intrinsic, the most elemental form of expression.
Yet, the word 'Krishna' would make no sense to a person who is completely unaware of Indian mythological stories and has never seen a picture of Krishna. The word 'Krishna' would mean nothing, the person might not even be sure if it is a name or not.
Does that mean the 'Visual' is the most elemental form of human expression ? (I am deliberately leaving out the word 'art' expression here).
According to what we know of our History, the cave paintings are the earliest record of humans' expression of what they saw and felt. Visuals must have come first. And visuals must have preceded language - what humans 'saw' would have to be the trigger for human need to express and communicate it.
I am sure we would have definitely cried and laughed and screamed as responses to physical and emotional triggers, but those classify as 'sounds' rather than 'language', and I am going to stop digging further as I know there probably would be no end. (Sound might probably lead to music and I am not sure I can think or elaborate on that well).

In the end, one thing I was sure was that no art form can exist in isolation. What the contemporary art world is now hailing as 'interdisciplinary', the 'new' trend, is perhaps the oldest and the most primitive. It had been extremely intrinsic, and now it is being made obvious.
Indian art, especially, has been meandering through forms always - Sculptures are inspired by Literature and Mythology, Paintings have been based on Music and its nuances (Ragamala), Dance has poetry as one of its inseparable aspects.

So what would I, as an artist, be bringing to the table? Apart from the immense love for arts, the yearning to embrace each as intimately as possible, how would I know how much I have stretched myself and my limits?
The answer again, for me, was the idea. The concept. Technical proficiency and perfection is one thing, but it is the realms of the 'idea' that I found a definition for myself, an identity.
But then again, there is NO way of knowing your ingenuity within it as well. Mark Twain has said -

“There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.”

This strangely comforts me as well as makes me cringe. It helps me in relieving the extremes of self analysis and self criticism I tend to heap on myself, and helps me to try and take Art a little less seriously. But somewhere along the process it also makes me question myself. This questioning will last a lifetime, and I figured I might as well continue creating art without waiting for a final answer, a final solution to all my doubts.

And so I am going ahead with 'AADYA'. The word literally means the essence, the origin. What better name to give to the event! And what better form to start with than dance, the form I have been with the longest. It is like this old, sometimes charming sometimes boring childhood friend that  I can't get rid of because the familiarity is lovable yet repulsive. Trying hard to get into its skin without forgetting my own was a beautiful process.
AADYA is nothing but the Bharathanatyam Margam, each piece presented in its raw essence, or rather what I thought was its raw essence. It is about peeping beyond the movements and the technical vocabulary and trying to reach for the blood of the concept and the characters behind each piece, right through the skin of music. It is a voyage into the soul of the metaphor that the art form is - the metaphor of imagery, the metaphor of ideas - constantly swinging between the human and the divine, taking the middle path of 'ART'.