Once again, the Union HRD Ministry is trying to achieve a breakthrough by including arts education in national syllabus. The past 25 years of my engagement with teaching Bharatnatyam has brought me the conviction that it is possible to create alternate learning situations and processes through imbibing the arts. I purposely used the word ‘imbibing’ rather than ‘learning’ because I believe that the arts cannot be typically ‘learnt’ like the other routine subjects which follow a curriculum-based approach based on absorption of factual learning.
Let me share an example. I have been teaching a group of ten students in the age group of 13 to 15 years who have been learning for over five years now, attending dance classes twice a week, alongside their formal schooling. They have been fairly regular, hardworking and involved. Though they constantly get copious doses of motivational verbal therapy!
But that apart, there are certain skills you pick up while learning classical dance just by virtue of being engaged in the process of learning it in the traditional way. One such skill is Efficient Sequencing. What is it? It is a skill that is integral to the dance process. In both the learning of adavus (units of body movement) and in the use of abhinaya (expression), sequencing becomes part of the thought process; so much a part of any dancer that she/he stops thinking of it as a skill.