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| Home > Types Of Sculpture > Dance Sculpture
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| | Dance Sculpture
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The theory seems that based on only dance and the theatre, and it may not concerned very much with sculpture. In fact, there exist is a profound inter-relationship in them. The expressions related with any particular forms of the sculpture or the metaphors they contain can be explained properly in terms of Dhvani. The `latent traces`, the forms evoke are a series of a visual and sensuous memories of all those other experiences. For better understanding, examples like tree-trunks, fish in a pool, elephant trunks, flower petals are used in them whose emotional charge is added to the meaning of the sculpture. But closer connection between the ideal theatre, in provoking Rasa and the art of sculpture is noted.
Therefore, Indian sculpture in India can be said as intentionally tied with the expressive modes of the Indian dance-drama. And most probably, the art of the sculptor has exercised a reciprocal influence upon the dancer`s art. Of course, this is a natural relationship. But there can be little doubt about the figure sculptures with which Indian temples are encrusted, are parallel closely with the dancers who were at one time associated with the temples.
But today this tradition doesn`t seem to be continued. Very few major temples from the south have the tradition of maintaining a corps of dancers. However, there must be a time when this practice has been widely spread in India. On the gateway tower of the temple at Chidambaram (in South India), various steps of the dancing Shiva are carved. Even this is also a fact of mention that this temple has preserved a complete record of the dance postures from the Middle Ages. They are carved in relief as a series of bands. A sole religious significance in performing dances was that - at certain times of the day, the resident corps-de-ballet performed dances in front of the shrine to enrich the cultural heritage. Because most of the times these dances were based upon the divine legends of the Indian mythology and flourished literature. Therefore, the dancers were constantly `realizing` the roles of the deities described in the legends. The temple dancers were called as the devadasis. They were also available by paying a fee to perform for those who could pay; and the temple corps-de-ballet overlapped with the court troupes of the local princelings. So as a result of this fact, the visual experience due to sculpture was always intimately related with that of the dance and love.
Thus, a major attention in Indian sculpture has to be paid on a kind of expression, apart from the granted sensuous & quality of the sculptor`s forms. May be it is not easy for Westerners to read it especially since modern art has originated. It has more or less forbidden us to look at figurative art with the right kind of attention and interest.
The mimetic expression summarized by of the whole figure must be a point of concern to us. And surprisingly, most of the human figures represented in Indian sculpture are always engaged in some mimetic expression. Even the figures that may seem in just sitting or standing or doing nothing in particular are specially intending to present an expressing `repose`, or `ease` with all the postures of their body and limbs.
The dancing figures are always shown `on stage`, as it were. These figures are sculptured dancers embodying their roles with utilizing all the resources of the Indian dance. But by the mere fact, human dancers will have all those lapses from ideal canonical beauty, which are inseparable from humanity or bodily defects. The sculptured dancers are embodied in forms that are wholly accepted to what they have to express. Not always the sculptures refer to actual dancers or representation of `the dance`, but even something that is outside and beyond themselves. With sculptures there is no danger of the spectator reacting as to a real person. But certainly, they do share some of the resources of the dance in this sense that they evoke groups of memory traces, by presenting the `effects` postures & gestures.
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