Tag: International Dance Day

April Highlights: Poetry Month and Stress Awareness

April is a beautiful month of Spring. It also is Poetry Month, Stress Awareness Month, and plays host to several days such as Earth Day, World Reading Day, International Dance Day, and we found out quite recently, World Quantum Day.

Trying to accommodate all these different aspects into reading and experiences can be quite the adventure if you let it.

For Stress Awareness Month, we released the fourth episode of Sitare Spotlight. This time, our guest was Salima Banu Iezzey. Salima is a fitness coach, adventurer and nutritionist. The conversations with her were a good reminder for all the tenets of good living. Simple things we can do for daily well-being, bigger adventure goals and healthy eating. Please check it out here:

Sitare Spotlight Ep.4: Salima Banu Iezzey on Fitness, Adventure & Wellbeing

https://youtu.be/Tpirxjy_u8U?si=2-3P_Q7ltAgjpChA

For Poetry Month, apart from dipping into poetry collections from time to time, this time I also read about the life and times of Emily Dickinson. It was fascinating to see how the few poems of hers that did make it to publication during her lifetime were published anonymously by her friends and family members.

Book: Becoming Emily – the life of Emily Dickinson – Krystyna Poray Goddu (what a fascinating way to  spell Krystyna?) 

It was only after her death that her friend and niece got her poems published – a little tug of war between them to see who had access to more poems. It is also interesting to note that like Jane Austen, Emily Dickinson too hailed from a family that valued education, and somehow, even during those times of limited financial independence for women, were unmarried. That probably explains the prodigious work they were able to turn out in their lifetimes.

On Earth Day I gazed down upon Earth as we took off and flew over arid deserts, lush green forests, snowy stretches, oceans brimming with life, on my travels. All the time marveling at humankind and our ability to create a safe mode of transport in the air when we neither have the wings nor the air-borne buoyancy required to pull it off. Our innovation helping us gaze over the beautiful planet and peer into the maps being flashed on the screens”

Flying over Deer Lake, Cat Lake, Big Trout Lake, Sam Lake, Kingfisher lake, Wunnumin Lake – past Saskatchewan and Ontario

Quaktaq – Past Hudson Bay – where I remembered reading about the Great Bear Sea and the Arctic Unicorns (Narwhals) 

Then I zoomed and chuckled over whimsical, interesting and beautiful names: Pikangikum, Quaktaq, Akulivik Puvirnituk.

One of the many futures of AI innovations may whisper in my head the meanings or origins of each of these names, but for now, it was enough for me to muse. Imagine nonsensical little things about their etymology, the languages, or the peoples who named them. I wonder why we don’t spend more time as amateur cartographers, naming the little nooks and corners of our daily walks. I remember telling someone to meet me at Reflection Pond, and then remembering that there was no Reflection Pond on the map. It was simply a name the children and I had come up for the dear pond on one of our many strolls. It was the time of sunset, the pink and orange hues above our heads were beautifully reflected in the serene waters below, and we sat there, each of us lost in our own reflections.

Read also:

https://nourishncherish.org/2025/04/17/%f0%9f%8c%8e-happy-earth-day-%f0%9f%8c%8e/

World Quantum Day

2025 is also the International Year of Quantum as designated by the United Nations. 100 years since Quantum Mechanics became a part of higher education science and research. 

Maybe there will be a day n the future dedicated to World AI Day.

Ahh…hold on: There already is: July 16th is declared as Artificial Intelligence Appreciation Day

Read also:

https://nourishncherish.org/2025/04/15/celebrating-world-quantum-day-history-and-fun-facts/

International Dance Day:

Those for whom Dance is a joy, there is a day on which to think about its many obvious advantages. The little spring in the step, the little hum in the brain, the little smile on your lips.

Read also:

https://nourishncherish.org/2025/04/24/celebrate-international-dance-day-a-journey-through-dance-dramas/

What are your favorite aspects of April?

Celebrate International Dance Day: A Journey Through Dance Dramas

International Dance Day is coming. 

One of the best things about my dance teacher was how she helped transform the world on the stage with mere mortals. Children of varying interest levels, abilities and time. We somehow knew each other’s pieces, and the rehearsals became a place of camaraderie and belonging like nothing I have known since.  Friendships formed in the orbit of practice, each of us helping or being helped as the D-day drew near. The energy of practice was always enough to bring a smile. No matter how hard or terrible a day you’d been having, if you have to smile and dance when it is your turn, it does something to you, and you find yourself in a better frame of mind without even trying. 

How I wish dancing, singing, art, literature, creative writing, team and adventure sports are all a part and parcel of everyone’s life on a regular basis. Without having to carve time for it, without yearning for it, without having to take the car or public transit to plan for it. What a luxury that would be?

As we spend time working, we spend time in our creative pursuits – intellectual, or physical. 

As the children grew up, I had the chance to attend many dance programs, arangetrams and productions over the years. As soul-nourishing as they all were/are, I still yearn for the dance dramas that my childhood teacher was so good at conceptualizing, choreographing, composing, teaching and performing. Who cannot be caught up in the climax of Mohini skillfully directing Bhasmasura towards annihilating himself through dance, or Mahishasura Mardini, or any other epic being played out on stage?

While I yearned for multi-dancer theatrical dramas played out on stage, I was also keenly aware of why they were difficult to pull off. In a society where the number of hours were optimized, did you dedicate time for learning your margam of items – the standard pushpanjali/kowthwam, alarippu, jasthiswaram, shabdam, varnam, keerthanais and thillana so that you can prepare for an arangetram in that time, or spend a part of that time with a dance drama production? It is a tricky situation complicated by expectations of society – individual performances merited standardized margams, dance dramas demand a different format.

So, whenever I get the chance to go to a dance drama, I practically dance into the auditorium myself. 

Nirupama Vaidyanathan’s Journeys of Faith based on Shoba Narayan’s book, Food & Faith

In recent years, I have had the pleasure of attending a few of these theatrical productions. Nirupama Vaidyanathan’s Journeys of Faith based on Shoba Narayan’s book, Food & Faith was one such. Nirupama is always skilled at having multiple dancers quickly move together, seamlessly, in beautiful patterns on stage. She managed to incorporate standard thillana-style formats etc into this production which I thought was a very clever way to balance the needs of the student and the theatrical dance drama format.

That dance performance was amazing. Nirupama is a clear orator, and in this production, her voice overs, where she was narrating pieces from the book as she set the stage for the Palani Murugan temple or the Udipi Srikrishna Temple were amazingly done. She had the music pieces composed, and stitched together for the dance drama. I just have to close my eyes to see the way all her senior students came together on stage at the very end to show how the prasadam in a big temple kitchen is prepared. Who cannot be filled by a performance like that, followed by an excellent prasadam at the Livermore Temple afterwards?

She combined literature, theatre, dance and music in such a satisfying and eloquent manner that a year after the actual performance, I am able to recall the transformation of the stage in her skilled and capable hands.

Meenakshi Sundareshwarar Dance Drama

I had a similar feeling with the Meenakshi Sundareswarar dance performance by Sharanya Ganesan. It has been a few months since her dance school staged the dance drama to which I was invited. But, was it a transformative experience?! She managed to fill the stage with students of every stage in their dancing journey. 

There was the child Meenakshi, the young-adult Meenakshi, and the adult Meenakshi – with all the dancers accompanying the stories filling the stage with their rhythmic jathis, their quick and coordinated movements. The stage ebbed and flowed with the dancers themselves. The costumes – oh the costumes! Bharatanatyam costumes are always a joy to behold, but on that stage, they took on a fantastic life of their own. Except for the main characters of the story – Meenakshmi, her parents, Sundareshwarar etc, everyone was clothed in combinations of cream and (red, pink, violet, or green). I have always loved the cream colored combinations, and on that stage housing over 50 dancers, they all stood out and merged together. 

The dance performance itself co-ordinated across all the batches of children she teaches must have been both a joy and a huge project in and of itself. Every group knew of the pieces they needed to perform, but according to her senior students who spoke to the audience afterwards, the whole thing was a concept weaved together into the magic it transformed into only in Sharanya Ganesan’s head. 

On YouTube Please!

Every time I look for entertainment to watch, I yearn to see if these dance dramas would be on YouTube or Netflix. I wish they were. For I love to watch a good dance drama on a cold evening – I end up watching some dance pieces, but a good dance drama choreographed, executed with such talent, beauty and grace would be something that I would love to see every now and then, or even on a flight. 

There are always good ones we miss out on because of conflicts – how marvelous it would be, if we could manage to fill our souls with the performances later? I am on a flight to South India – thumbing through the entertainment available on the flight, I thought to myself that  I would love to see The Whispers of the Kaveri when I am traveling to the very lands of the Kaveri river – Tamil Nadu & Karnataka.