Adult Dance Student

The Language of Dance

Adult Dance Student by Preethi Sriram

As I continue to learn more about Classical Indian Dance, I am realizing how it seems to be its own “language family.”

Language is a portal to the mind and to the thoughts and emotions of others. It is a way to share information and ideas. Having knowledge of one language can be beneficial for sharing feelings amongst a group of people who may understand the same language.

Bilingualism and Multilingualism can have individual benefits and can help to make a person be able to think and share ideas to different groups. By learning and understanding a new language as well as understanding the structure, it feels like a way to “open” one’s mind and allows for “multidirectional” thinking. Being bilingual or understanding the concepts of bilingualism/multilingualism teaches a life lesson as well: there can be more than one way to say a sentence, just like there can be more than one perspective.

But what if words are not enough - or someone is not able to communicate through words? How can communication occur? Maybe hand gestures could be the language used instead of words.

When learning about the history of modern sign language evolution from an online search, its beginnings can be seen from when monks had taken a vow of silence. Because they still had to communicate, they thus created a rudimentary way of “speaking” to each other. In the 1500s, a Spanish Benedictine Monk took these signs to teach deaf students in Spain, which created a path for the inception of the formal sign language. Sign language helped in opening another “portal” to those who may not have been able to speak, and prior to the creation of the language, it was hard for those who were not able to speak to participate in society effectively.

Parallels to sign language can be seen in the Classical Indian Dance Forms. An aspect of the dance that I have been learning more in depth is the hand gestures, which can be seen as analogous to sign language. These signs can then be used to help tell a story.

Each sign can be thought of as a “word.” Each word put together makes a sentence, and each sentence can be made into multiple sentences/stories. The dance hand gestures follow a similar concept.

There are Single Hand Gestures (Asamyuktha hasta), double hand gestures (Samyuktha hasta), and many “intermediate” hand gestures (Viniyoga Hasta) and gestures to denote the various divinities (Devatha hasta). Thus, the hand gestures taught within Indian Classical Dance have parallels that can be seen to the “family” of sign language.

While many may be familiar with the concepts of hand gestures within classical dance, there are many more parts

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