Dances of India showcases diversity

There’s more to Dances of India than the name implies. Each year’s performance closes with an ensemble titled “Unity in Diversity,” and Saturday’s edition will put traditional dances from Spain, the Caribbean and China alongside those of the program’s namesake country.

“Most of the time, language, religion and cultural differences create barriers and divide us. When we use dancing to convey the Unity in Diversity message, all these barriers do not exist,” Dances of India founder Maha Gingrich says.

“No language is required to understand simple human emotions. … I want to break that barrier down and let people enjoy diverse cultures and understand their stories told through dance and movement.”

Gingrich, who danced professionally in her native India, has taught in Charlotte since 1986, and more than 50 of her students will dance alongside her Saturday. To perform the other nations’ styles, she will bring in specialists, including bomba dancer Everdith Landrau and flamenco dancer Marena Shenefelter.

Bomba sprang up in Puerto Rico, where slaves brought from Africa created it, Gingrich says. When the laborers got together to relax, the women dressed up in petticoats and roomy skirts, mimicking those of their colonial rulers’ wives. They weren’t paying homage.

“British women (didn’t) lift their skirts, because you weren’t supposed to show your petticoats,” Gingrich says. “The slaves would dress up in that kind of dress, but the whole dance is lifting the outside gown and showing the petticoat underneath, mocking the colonial women – defying their rule.”

Dances of India will take female dancers’ use of their skirts as a theme, Gingrich says. Flamenco’s flashing skirts point up the bravura style’s roots in India, home of gypsies whose migrations carried them through Russia and Eastern Europe to Spain. In Indian dance, Saturday’s program will showcase how women went beyond their stereotypical roles inside the home.

An Indian dance called Tippani originated with women who helped build homes and roads, Gingrich says. Holding sticks with wooden discs attached to the end, they moved in formation, pounding the clay or mud beneath them to compress it. The chore evolved into a dance that made the labor less tedious, and singing all the while helped distract everyone even more.

Saturday’s program will also include two dance dramas from Hindu culture. In one, Gingrich will perform a temple dance in which Parvati, wife of the Hindu deity Shiva, describes how her husband worked his miracles. The other, Gingrich says, is a less-familiar version of the story of how the Hindu god Ganesha came to have an elephant’s head attached to his human body. Whereas the best-known account says Ganesha’s father cut off the youth’s head in a confrontation, this version focuses on a curse afflicting a visitor to the newborn Ganesha.

“Even most Indians have no idea that there is another twist to the story than what we were brought up with,” Gingrich says.

All the dances will feature authentic costumes, Gingrich says, from the wooden discs for the Tippani dance to masks for the characters in the dance dramas. Live music will increase the impact and show respect for tradition.

“What I take pride in … is that these dances are represented in the purest form,” Gingrich says. “Because Bollywood has taken over, and now everything is very different – fusing hip-hop culture. That’s fine – Bollywood has its place. But this is the foundation of Indian culture.”

This story was originally published April 23, 2015 at 1:56 PM with the headline "Dances of India showcases diversity."