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its momentum are all-absorbing, perhaps inspired by the darsan, perhaps celebrating it, suggesting that there is no dance, but only the dance'.
This 'moment of being' for the dancer, the glimpse, the coy acknowledgement, the thrust for continuity, the inevitable desire to go on and on, to fulfil some special journey, are in existence, not only in human drama and its creations but tortuous in all of nature: they mark the bend in the road; they are the turning points' on the long and hazardous path; this is where one turns, and from where one returns, to assume the pilgrimage.
Dance as an artistic motif has been used in all cultures, yet none has visualised its supreme gods and goddesses as dancers. In India one cannot conceive the cosmos without Siva the Natarāja, 'the Lord of Dance' and Krsna the Natavara, 'the dancer'.
There is a story about the great French artist Henri Matisse and his design of the Chapel of the Rosary of the Dominican Nuns of Venice, consecrated in June 1951. A year earlier, in 1950, Matisse was invited to exhibit in Paris at the Maison de la Pensee Francaise, a place considered by many as a Communist cultural centre. To the obvious chagrin of the organisers, Matisse had in
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Nataraja, Kangra, 18th century. Courtesy: Allahabad Mu
Reum.
Two Manipuri dancers dancing in an egg-like form.
