Tuesday 6 March, 2007

understanding sound

I'm almost impelled to reinvent the term 'choreography'....
Apalling is the way songs are choregraphed in cinema. Barring a few dancers who have developed the rare art of understanding and mastering the slick 'shiamak davar' style of dance, the rest need to understand what choreography really is...

First, its never really about dancing. Sure, dance is one part of it but yes, certainly not the gyrating and pelvic thrusting kind of dance that is passed off as belly dancing.
These are art fors that need to be respected independently...but why must we almost always have the usual attrocious mix of acrobatics and a distorted form of Indian dance which interprets no form?

Dance is actually about being rhythmic... about truly relating to the sound and responding stylishly....its about being in sync with that sound and rhythm.... its about adding something to the song...beautifying it.. moving your body -letting it understand the sound and feel and allowing it to react.... then simply fine tuning that movement into something artistic and graceful. The body while dancing, should give the feel of a fluidity, a sense of liberation, a dignity and poise that can never be trained. When we dance, we surrender to the soul responding to the sound - a love for the sound... unspoken, untouched, raw and divine...
Which is perhaps why Hrithik is always a delight to watch... he takes you to heights unexplored with his grace. No matter how complicated the movements maybe, yet his natural ease and dignity make it graceful and lyrical.
However, choreography is not about dancing always.
Its about depicting an emotion with subtlety. Using different things to interpret the emotion, the mood, about capturing the moment using music and sometimes simply the sounds of nature like the rains, rippling of the water in the river.... the gushing and whistling of the breeze....
things need not be theatrical...they can be sensitive and quiet as well. Soetomes simply the echoing of distant birds in the silence.
Music and choreography is to be used to capture a moment- enhancing it.
'Ek ladki ko dekha to aisa laga...' from '1942, a love story' is one such piece of choreography or the recent hrithik number 'dhoom again' in Dhoom 2 that is brilliant and artistically done...
Can we have more of such kind please?


No comments: