NRITYAGRAM, INDIA, March 3, 2012 (New York Times): Movement has long pervaded Indian thought. Dance here is a vivid element in religion, mythology, philosophy and art. Although I have spent over 35 years following dance in the West, a four-week visit to India in February made me feel that only now have I witnessed dance where it is truly central to culture.
Nowhere more so than in the disciplined utopia of Nrityagram, a village far from the madding crowd that is completely given over to the pursuit of dance. The village’s company, the Nrityagram Dance Ensemble, is a lustrous exemplar of Odissi, one of India’s classical dance forms. Ever since Nrityagram’s first New York season in 1996 at the Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College, no Indian dancers have been better known in America. I stayed in this village for four days, observing round-the-clock rehearsals and classes as the company prepared for its latest tour, which on Tuesday brings it to the Joyce Theater for six days.
The road to Nrityagram is an hour’s drive west from Bangalore in the state of Karnataka. In this temperate hill country the dancers and musicians (there is also a writers’ colony) are used to working in studios open to the air without doors or windows; their buildings are surrounded by thrilling birdsong and flowering vegetation.
Nrityagram was founded in 1990 as a gurukul, or residential village of learning, by the actress Protima Bedi. Though she died in 1998, her name is constantly invoked here. Her vivid personality and love affairs were one part of her legend, but another was her commitment to Indian classical dance, and in particular Odissi, of which she became by all accounts a compelling exponent. In essence Nrityagram remains as she had hoped: an idyllic place where it is not unusual for people to dance — usually with live musicians — morning, noon, and night.
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