Interview with Birju Maharaj

Dance is nature. Listen to your heart, it dances with its own rhythm. The biggest thing that classical dance and music does to you is help attain balance between your mind and soul. Once you are balanced, you will learn from your own mistakes and develop into a good human being. Also riyaaz (practice) is an integral part of any art form. So manage your time well and dedicate adequate time for your riyaaz.

When you are a student, you will always strive for more knowledge. Your thirst for learning about new things will never die. I have seen many people who have achieved perfection in their respective fields and have considered themselves gurus but eventually, they never learned beyond what they knew.

Yes, classical dance is one of the ways to connect with the divine. Hence it is called a sadhana. I tell my students, to imagine that each time they strike a pose (sama), let their eyes look at Krishna, that way there is an inherent bhakti (devotion) in the dance. The tatkar (footwork) practice should be like a japa (chant) where instead of ‘hare ram hare krishna’ we are saying ‘ na dhin dhin na’. When dance is done with that emotion, it connects us to the divine.

Every few days, I find myself in a new city, and sometimes I lose track of where I am. But I begin each day without fail with my morning puja, which is a meditative experience. Every night, I do my japa before going to bed. Wherever I am, I eat very simple food vegetables, rice, dal and roti or some khichadi.

Music is made of three elements: singing, instruments and dance. If you know singing and have an adequate knowledge of musical instruments, your dance will be enriched. Kathak needs a lot of breath control, strength and stamina. Yoga and meditation help achieve this. Good food habits bring a sattvikta into our being. When you have overall awareness of all these components of dance and art, you will realise their interdependence.

This is an old memory, of a performance in Mumbai. I was depicting the story of Yashoda and Krishna and at the end of the piece I was so lost in emotion that I forgot my being standing on the stage, looking upon the face of Krishna. The audience was also in a reveirie and even though the music had stopped , there was complete silence for many minutes. We were all lost in the experience of feeling Krishna; eventually someone clapped and broke us out of that.

Dance is a complete art. Sur, taal, bhav and laya, an in-depth knowledge of all these aspects is vital, even if one is weak. Without these, your education is incomplete. Laya is especially important; a dancer must be perfect in his laya to bring the necessary grace and synchronization in his dance. Without it, dance is not possible.

While the internet is suitable for an exposure to the dance form, true learning happens only in the classroom in the Guru-Shisya parampara. Through my training, I want students to be aware that classical dance is connected to spiritualism and culture. We aren’t scared of the audience and so don’t change our repertoire, because I believe that people will appreciate tradition all over again. At Kalashram, I use the traditional parameters to choreograph new presentations. I want people to see that even classical style can be very appealing, interesting and dignified.

An artist's best teacher is nature. My only advice to young dancers is to watch and observe nature, which is a perfect symphony. Watch a tree and its branches; watch the winds whistle, the clouds rumble, the lightning dance through the skies. Why do you need to go anywhere, when nature is here?