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Sunday, March 15, 2009
I happened to visit a museum for different art forms during my visit to Kerala last week. It was a different experience. It seems this place called 'Green Village was once upon a time a go-down which has now been converted to a museum. The first hall that we entered was a long corridor, fully decorated with high quality, expensive murrels and paintings. One could see at the end of the passage a stage where the artist puts make up for the performance. A day they showcase all forms of dance for a short duration.
The adjacent hall towards the left, has a library and a cafeteria at the front of the building behind which is a hall with live sized statues of all the dance forms.
Towards the right of the passage is the theatre where you get to see the artists perform. Thankfully, it was all for 5 minutes. Frankly when I saw bhrathanatyam, it seemed quite funny. One lady making some moves with strange expressions. Smiling like she is mad sometimes, trying to cry sometimes, looking angry at times, it was all so weird. Then came the Kathakalli. One thing I understood about this form was that it is a highly exagerrated form of human expressions. There was a demo of that form at start. Bascially this show wasa for people who are interested to get a glimpse of all forms of dance prevailent in Kerala.
Being a proud Keralite, I was confused about finding our very own Kathakalli funny. Artist with a big bum showing super natural expressions. Quite predictive though.
Then came a form called 'Theyyam'. That was predictive again. Truly an expression of frustration, may be due to heat, something like an urge to kill someone. That dude was in trance, dancing around like mad with rhytmic beats. I wanted to join him and take the sword and run.
One conclusion that I could make seeing all this was, some people in the past who did not have anything else to do had the opportunity to explore and simply create some form of art. Since there wouldn't have been any other means of entertainment, these were on demand and must have got popular. In this era, when so many artisits and struggling with different forms of art, its amazing how these forms have been popular over ages and still being given all the importance. Well, am not against all these. It is defintely something to be proud of. But I wonder what is there to talk so much about it.
I believe that I have not missed much, not knowing it.
posted by confusionism at
1:41 PM
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