After just over four years of dance, K, who will turn turn eight in the summer, received her first set of bells on Sunday. These are the ghungroo*, the little brass bells that are woven (by the dancer, or in this case, the dancer’s mother) onto a length of thin rope. These are the bells [...]
Archive for the ‘Dance/Arts’ Category
Where is my magic writing cloud at the top of the tree?
Posted in Being the people, Dance/Arts, Writing, tagged artists colony, Enid Blyton, MacDowell Colony, Magic Faraway Tree, research, Sheila Dhar, writing colony, writing with children on March 28, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
People ask how I do it—children, freelance work, dance, volunteering, home and meals, writing, but the fact of the matter is, the secret is, very often I just don’t. And when I don’t, it’s the writing that is the first to go. (Well, except for when Next Doors is providing the meal, in which case [...]
Dance oasis
Posted in Dance/Arts, Moments, tagged ankle bells, Chhandika, dance class, dancing pregnant, Gretchen Hayden, kathak, Varsha Yeshwant on January 26, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
A couple of years ago, a photojournalism graduate student from Boston University named Varsha Yeshwant approached Chhandika, the dance group with which I am closely affiliated, asking for permission to create a multi-media project around our dance. Specifically, she said: “I want this to serve as a small window into the world of Kathak and [...]
Creative life, you say?
Posted in Being the people, Dance/Arts, Writing, tagged creative life, dance, kathak, time to write, Writer Unboxed, writing, writing life on November 15, 2011 | 1 Comment »
A couple of months ago, a friend—an artistic filmmaker—asked me: how do you sustain a creative life or even a creative project in the midst of children, work, home, health and volunteering? She asked this not as a rhetorical question, but as someone who seemed truly to expect that I would have an answer for [...]
Divergent thinking
Posted in Being the people, Dance/Arts, Parenting, Writing, tagged arts, creativity, divergent thinking, education, Ken Robinson on November 6, 2010 | 3 Comments »
A friend of mine posted on her Facebook page a link to a fascinating talk by Sir Ken Robinson about education and creativity. Fascinating, but, especially for a parent, worrisome, for it makes me feel that, with my daughters in regular, public schools, there is little hope of them retaining the creativity with which they [...]
Disappointment
Posted in Being the people, Dance/Arts, Parenting, Writing, tagged auditions, disappointment, kathak, revisions on October 26, 2010 | 1 Comment »
K doesn’t like tags in clothing. (Who does?) They scratch her, and she always wants them taken out. (Why haven’t more clothing makers adopted the tagless system of printing the relevant information on the inside of the neckline?) A few days ago, we went clothing shopping, and she picked out a few items, including a [...]
Reflections on the death of a guru
Posted in Being the people, Dance/Arts on July 8, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Yesterday was Guru Purnima. Traditionally, it is a day for devotees to honor their guru. Today, for anyone studying an art form, it translates into a day for honoring one’s teachers. I am grateful for my own kathak dance teacher, Gretchen Hayden, who would balk at the term “guru” applied to her (and who has [...]
