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Wonders of Life

Wonders of Life


Recently, I heard a story. Kids in a class were asked to write wonders in their life. Everyone wrote different things. Some wrote about parents, friends and so on. One particular girl wrote that the wonders in her life are that she can see, hear, walk, talk, also can experience nature and arts. I was really moved by this story. What is really important in life? Experience!
While I was learning classical dance, I always used to have a question. How do you show spontaneity in dance? If I am rehearsing 6-7 hours a day, won't it be too technical when I actually perform it? How can one go to fetch water every single day with same enthusiasm? Teachers used to tell us to imagine our own life experiences similar to the situation in dance. Agreed, but what if we have never experienced this?
My mentor and me decided to find answers. If a situation demands for romantic expression, try to remember your first crush. Try to remember the exact situation. The place, time, other people around, and so on. This helps to recreate the experience and our body might react in the same way. Because dance is all about body language, it is very important to know how your body reacts to a particular emotion. For example, in erotic situation, breathing gets heavier, torso is erect, eyes expanded and glance is sideways. These are external or recognizable changes. Other changes are, feeling like intoxicated, butterflies in stomach, increased heartbeats etc. Recreating external changes is easy if you use a proper technique; but if you really experience the internal changes, the expression seems real. 
This also justified rehearsing a lot because you have to be really thorough with your steps and actions so that in actual performance you can focus on recreating the past experience. In fact, the actions became more graceful and meaningful. But this technique requires a constant update. You have to always look for experiences for different situations and also try to remember more and more. So for this, we did an experimental exercise. You have to close your eyes, put a soothing music and try to hear as many sounds around you as you can. This helps you to be in a present and absorb the smallest details in that situation. 
These exercises quite helped me in an actual performance. Also, as I mentioned the story, the real life lesson was learned. Any small thing which we take for granted, can make wonder!

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