DANCE WITH MIND OF YOUR OWN

MAGAZINE

BY-

T SESHU SIRISH RAVI TEJA

AAA0554

BY-

T SESHU SIRISH RAVI TEJA

AAA0554

Introduction

A new beginning with a new semester thought that life would be better and full of fun. All of a sudden I get news that I am registered in “Dance with a mind of your own “. All of a sudden have no clue of what is going to happen.Then I get a bad news that it is Same like LIT, I have a question now “If this course is like LIT why are we doing it again “, Felt like the history is going to repeat and we have to perform those stupid exercises again.

A bright sunny morning in our first we did have an introductory session given by Aadhya, which I sadly missed in the course. In the second session we given introduction to the 5 elements of Dance – Body, Space, time, action and energy, and we had to submit a report on it written in few hundreds of words. I think this was the first time I had analyzed any dance performance in my life ( I think in most of others lives even).

Aug 19, 2014

After a long wait in the class room which we were using before and thinking that all others except some of us (who were in the class) were fools , we got the information that the class is in library basement (theater hall).

So as soon as we rushed to the basement we were confused, we did not know anything around us.

Here we had our first exercise which I missed-

Firstly we were handed a picture with different shapes in different colors, from which we were supposed to choose a shape, create a movement and present it in accordance to our name. This whole exercise was done by everyone turn by turn. After that we were asked to do each other’s step along with our own one. After the second or third time when this exercise was repeated what I observed was a shocking thing that I started to remember the movement of others by recalling their faces.

Next we had to select shapes and with movements we had to guess what they actually meant to convey.

I should accept it was a great fun watching it.

After this point of time I was given a chance to participate in the class.

Thoughts, Representation and interpretation

Now we were made in group of 2 and we had to make any posture and the partner had to interpret what we actually meant to convey.

I seriously felt I missed this exercise as my partner was very annoying as she did not feel to participate in the exercise.

But at last we turned out to make something out of nothing and I myself felt that there are many things that can be represented by a single posture and each posture had very minute detailing which adds meaning into it. And to convey what we meant to convey in our mind the important thing is that we should see things from the audience point of view. This forms the base of most of the “Indian classical Dances”(as each posture and each hand position has a meaning in it, e.g. Barthanatyam dance shown in second lecture of the course) and because of following them from such a long time it is now a part and parcbel of dance form.

Thoughts, Representation and interpretation

As soon as we entered the class we were split into groups of 2 each our first exercise was on mirroring things in which a person would be acting as the real object and the other person would be acting as the mirror image of the person.

Initially I felt it would be an easy task but I at last found it to be very difficult below are some of the reasons for the same-

For being a mirror image of the person we need to be doing everything in reverse (i.e. for left use right and vice-versa) but this doesn’t happen. Unintentionally due to our human brain control over our body we use left for left and right for right.

Mirror image doesn’t create sound, but as we think we need to replicate the person we unintentionally create sounds which again comes under human intelligence.

There is a huge difference between person to person in terms of intelligence, memory and body which is the reason bally dancers were able to replicate each other but we were not.

Next was an activity of sculpting in which a person becomes the sculpture and the other the sculpturer . It was kind of different experience as we were a guy and girl in the group and it was highly embarrassing for me to do such an activity with a new person who I felt was an introvert (she felt highly uncomfortable).But then the experience turned out to be great when she felt ok as I was just sculpting her legs, hands and face.

I felt hat even after being a sculpture with no life we do want to have control over our body .

Postures, Partners and Intelligence

Postures, Partners and Intelligence

The social taboos like gender, culture etc. comes into account when we have to perform an activity like this .

Embarrassment doesn’t depend on gender. Embarrassment is impartial.

The next exercise was to give impulses to your partner and the way she reacts for the same, after 2 to 3 times of practice we were asked to perform the act without our partner.

It is difficult to perform an act and with our action create a person next to us.

When it comes to impulse the first thing that comes to our mind is hit or punch, but even a blow of air or catching the persons hand comes under impulse.

When it comes to any act 2 people in the group make it better than only one.

This gets us to the end of the class.

Memory, Interpretation and Match

This gets us to the first evaluated assignment of the course, the basic idea was to use our past memory and make an act out of it.

For this assignment I was teamed with Sharan and group.

We actually had an idea of getting into a common memory that is dreaming about our favorite thing in class.So instead of just 3 students I thought of adding a teacher into the act who wants to go and have a fun time after his busy schedule.

Act – Initially a teacher enters the class and they start with the routine teaching and slowly a student goes into his dream of becoming a designer and winning a fashion show, and then comes the dream of the teacher who wants to go and chill out in some resort after his busy schedule. Now it’s a memory of a photographer who wants to go to different places invade different cultures and interact with people of different cultures to know about them.

I felt the following things form the act-

Actions speak more than words but with just actions we may not convey the whole meaning which can be added with help of words.

Every thought has to be made into its simplest form, if we try to act in a complex way it may change the act as people may nt think in the same way as we think.

Memory, Interpretation and Match

Below are some things thing that made people relate to our act- As most of the faculties lack holidays and are even bound to their personal life,

we felt even teachers would be waiting enthusiastically for their holidays. Most of us are engineers by chance and not by choice, due to reasons like

parents pressure, society issues and other stuff we are not able to make our choice in our life and hence we regret it most of the times and sometimes we think how better it would be if we had selected that particular carrier.

Every person nowadays has some hobby or passion which he feels better than his profession so those people want time for themselves to invade more into their passion and have a good time doing them.

The thing which made it successful were The way we teleported into the dream The way the person who dreamt was both a part and not a part of the

dream. The view of each person when he dreams about the thing he likes. But we lacked in some places, I myself felt that we could have made thing

better with just minimal changes.

Sorry for missing the class, Have no clue about what just happened in the class

Sept 6, 14

There was a non-graded assignment in which people were allotted different spaces and were asked to perform in different locations.

I missed the class before it so was not a part of the assignment.But learnt that

Every place has its own value and when you have things in your stage you need to act or move according to the space.

Space restrict moves of the person their perspective and the meaning behind them.

Sometimes even a non-dancer may get more meaning into the act then a dancer can.

The next part of the class we exposed to some music and we had to relate the same and discuss about the music.

Some of them were-

When she played a Hindustani classical music which was meant to be for rain we were not able to guess it, but after AAdya explaining about the raag and the background, we were able to relate it as we heard a background sound of rain, which says even the background adds the meaning in our act.

When it came to music that was meant to be revolutionary we mistook it for the coontemprory music of that time.

Space, Movements, perception

This class the other act was to interact with people and actually talking to them in a friendly manner but with the opposite expressions.

Initially it put us in a dialoma of what to do but when we had started performing we could enjoy the task as a whole.

I personally felt that the task was about what we say and what we think in our mind.We might abuse a person from inside but we try to act sweet to him as we feel he may be of our use anytime in the future. 3:)

Space, Movements, perception

With full of huff and puff and expressions we were narrated a story of the 3 little piglets and the wolf who blows the piglets house.

Once upon a time, there were three little pigs who went off to build their houses.The first little pig built his house of straw, which was not very strong.One day, the big bad wolf came and said, “Little pig, little pig, let me come in.”“Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin,” said the first little pig.“Then I’ll huff and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house down.”And he did. And he got the little pig and ate him all up.The second little pig built his house of sticks, which were not very strong.One day, the big bad wolf came and said, “Little pig, little pig, let me come in.”“Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin,” said the second little pig.“Then I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down.”And he did. And he got the little pig and ate him all up.The third little pig built his house of bricks, which were very strong.One day, the big bad wolf came and said, “Little pig, little pig, let me come in.”“Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin,” said the third little pig.“Then I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down.”But no matter how much the wolf huffed and puffed, the house did not blow down.So the big bad wolf said, “I’ll come down the chimney and eat you all up.”But when the wolf came down the chimney, he fell into a pot of boiling water and boiled all up.And the third little pig lived happily ever after in his house of bricks.

Most of the groups had abstracted the whole story and had just 3 people and a villain in it.

Back to childhood

Our group had just added a new character in the story where you have an uncle for the pigs and is miss-considered as the wolf and attacked by the 3 little piglets and the wolf enters the home and was hungry and has his breakfast.

This was inspired from another kinder garden story of the man who lies for a tiger and is at-last attacked by the tiger.

Overall it was a wonderful experience acting and watching the whole act.

Back to childhood

From childhood to oldage

After such a long period…The same room and with the same state of mind as that of first day.

Now I realised that every class of this CCC is interrelated and such a long break actually lead to a gap in our process of thinking. Especially due to involvement in breeze I completely forgot about what was happening in CCC!!

After seeing the same blank look on each and every face Aadya gave us a brief recap as to what we were doing and what are we supposed to do.

A picture was given to us and we need to observe, question & speculate it.What is noticed about the picture were

• A women inside a baloon.• 4 people in pink socks.• A tribal child in tribal costume• A old man• Splash of different colours

We had selected the picture of an old man with a kind of sorrow face,The questions raised were-

• Why was the person in grief• What is he looking at• Is the person becoming weak or something of that kind• Why is it in B/w.

After the discussion we gathered our ideas and started working on the presentation.

After a huge discussion and 3 days of practice we had presented our act.

Our act was on the choice made by an old person who lost interest in living and is awaiting death.So of course I was made the old person.We had showed that the person who has lost interest in life is now met by a person to take him to hell, to heaven, back to his life, and a life after death.

We selected the C wing of the academic block as it had represented all these places as we can show different paths over there.

At last everything went well and best part was we were praised for using the spatial intelligence well.

The choice of age old

Getting ready for the Finale

This time we had to select a theme of our own and after discussing with my group mates we decided on which was- Relationship between citizens of India and Pakistan before, at and after independence.

After adding whole of our memory from friends, social networks and thinking that even they are people we had concluded in doing this act.We had used an advertisement by google on reunion and many properties to add spices to our performance.

The Last Lesson

After some time of practice we were ready for our final presentation.

Today it was really a tough time to act like a Pakistani as I had no interaction with them and after adding things from my memory and using the most powerful weapon of this generation (internet). I got some clue on what to do and how we act.

It was an amazing experience to work in a team like that as I got a chance to interact with different people and know the way they think.

I even felt good as when I stick to some decision, and people go against it but at-last it works out.

Thank You

Things I learnt-

• The most important thing is that after working in a team I stated to stick to my decision and even make people accept my decision

• I don’t know in which journal to put this but after this course I actually started noticing things around me a lot.

• I feel like the things near me have changed totally.• Sometimes I get carried away by acting that I started to hate

using words and sometimes my madness increased to an extinct that I started talking to my friends in sign language.

• I started questioning about everything around me and even try to get control over my mind.

• There are many such experiences but this CCC actually helped me in discovering in what things I am good at.