Bharata's Karanas - An Interpretation

My first book, published in 2014 by Beagle Books and launched at the World Congress of International Federation of Theatre Research at Warrick University, United Kingdom. The second launch in Singapore - Dance India Arts Festival in 2016, and third launch in Perth - Western Australia, Sunset Heritage Precinct - Saraswati Mahavidhyalaya.

Abstract

The power of the image, whether static as in a painting, or animated as in dance, invokes often unusual or unasked questions as to its visual semiotics and philosophical underpinnings. Images speak a distinct, often subliminal, language, be it in performance or not. It is this language that underlies the images in this book, Bharata’s Karanas, a compendium of original 108 drawings of phrases of movement found in the NatyaShastra, an ancient Indian treatise on theatre. 
As in all thought processes, we subconsciously arrange our ideas in sequences, linear or otherwise, and act on the choices that are an outcome of this process. The creative morphing of this link from ‘thought to action’, and between ‘being and becoming’, is the essence of this compendium. 
Augmenting theoretical observations through direct experience, by being the dancer in the dance and, at the same time, being the artist of the artwork, constitutes a journey beyond a phenomenal aspect of tacit knowing; this will be a significant and lived knowing. Following this thread, these drawings explore the aesthetic ‘moment’ through experience; the moving notation of dance sculptures is studied and created as illustrations of ‘ink on paper’ from the point of view of ‘intentionality’. It also examines kinaesthetic impact on the neuro-physiology of the dancer as a corporeal entity and provides a rare insight in the area of consciousness studies.”