Friday, April 06, 2012

Music, dance, and theatre

The difference - someone has put it pithily - between Western music and Indian classical music is that the former is played standing while the latter is performed by sitting. The ballet, similarly, involves a lot of stretching upwards whereas Indian classical dance recitals are ordinarily weighed down by gravity. Another divide on the same lines seems to have surfaced recently. One section is vociferous about what Sri Aurobindo “stands for,” and the rest are content with Sri Aurobindo “sitting” in a theatrical ceremony. Easy guess as regards who's on which side. [TNM55]

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