Reflection (26 February 2020)

 All Indian Classical Art forms have a common base which has evolved over ages. The depth and vastness is unfathomable and a person cannot really master it in a lifetime. The more you learn the more you realize how little you know. 

Dance as we know it has gone through immense evolution. It has been interesting trying to trace the history of dance. I love dance and I love history. So it was natural for me to want to know more and more about the history of dance. 

As every dancer knows there are scriptures that have survived through thousands of years that has been the basis of all Indian classical art forms. Natyashastra is considered one of the most earliest scriptures that have elaborated on dramaturgy.  What is even more interesting is the fact that there was some existing form of dramaturgy that existed even prior to Natyashastra. Natyashastra is said to have been created to replace the exiting dramatical system which was not the most sophisticated. Natyashastra itself is considered to have been compiled around 200 BC - 200 CE. If there was something that existed prior to this , then we can safely assume that dramaturgy of some sort existed way before 200 B.C. This is an amazing fact which gives an idea of the sophistication of the civilization of those times. 

How Ancient Humans would have discovered Dance and Music?

I have always wondered what would have triggered humans to use drama as a source of entertainment back then. What was the purpose and how did it evolve. I really wish I had a time machine to take me to 200 BC or earlier. That is not possible but yes I could use my imagination. So i tried to ponder on this topic. I traced back to even earlier times. A time when men lived in caves, was predominantly hunter gatherers. At a time when language was also just evolving, symbols would have been the main mode of communication. It is evident from the many cave paintings that have been unearthed across the world that symbolism through painting was surely a method of communication/expression. Expressing through gestures of hand/eye and imitation of animal and nature sounds too might have been part of the early human's vocabulary. In almost all aboriginal cultures we see that some form of communal dance exists as part of customs and rituals. Many still follow them. Tracing back to the origins of those might give us an insight into how dance and drama has evolved over ages.

What was man's first words or sounds? What made him use his sound, modulate it to create a variety of sounds and then string them together into speech and rhythmic music. What prompted him to then move his body to those rhythms and probably use all these new found skills to tell stories that could be handed down from generation to generation ? I am almost confident that man started experimenting with sounds by imitating nature around him. But what made him dance to it ? What made him code his stories using the sounds and gestures. What triggered early humans to make drum like instruments ? Was it Nature that inspired them or was there some special innate ability that made it possible ?

We will ponder more deeply into this in my next post. Until then let our imaginations run wild.