Embodying Bhakti Rasa in Bharata Natyam: An Indian-Christian Interpretation of Gayatri Mantra through Dance

As the five female dancers from the Indian-Christian fine art college of Kalai Kaviri encircle the South Indian brass lamp, or vilakku, awakening it to life with the flames from their own individual votives, the beginning melody of a song cues the women to stretch out their arms in preparation to rise from their seated positions and dance. As they raise their arms in unison, the light glinting off their bangles and gold threaded costumes, the Sanskrit words Om Bhur Bhuvah Svah signal the invocatory phrase of the popular Gayatri mantra chanted daily by many Hindus all over the world. By the time the second repetition of the mantra is completed, the bodies of the dancers are fanned out from behind a single dancer, creating the visual image of the sun with its rays beaming outwards to all directions of the universe

Book Review: Body Parts: A Theological Anthropology

Book review of Body Parts: A Theological Anthropology. By Michelle Voss Roberts. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017, xlvii + 181 pages

An Aesthetics of Hospitality: Embodied Religious Experience and Scholarly Engagement in Hindu-Christian Studies

IT is with pleasure that I accepted an invitation to be a respondent to a panel that explores the interstices between aesthetic theory and practice. As an ethnographer who is trained in Sanskrit aesthetics, I am particularly interested in what happens in the spaces of contact and crossover between various embodied religious traditions. For me, these explorations mostly have been located in the study of Bhārata Nāṭyam, a rhythmic dance form through which artists traditionally enact the stories of Hindu gods and their devotees. In contemporary practice, the themes and practitioners of this dance form reflect a much broader spectrum of adaptation that includes various religious and secular contexts. I have posited that the interpretive reframing of the aesthetic of bhakti rasa, a devotional mood, by performers serves as a pivotal foundation for why and how choreographers and dancers move across religious boundaries in their choices of choreographic themes and participation in the dance form. I am humbled by Michelle Voss Roberts’ kind words about the small contributions I have made to the ongoing dialogue on aesthetics and pluralism in her introduction