Hair, makeup, jewellery sets and silk saris. Preparation is long and meticulous. Each detail is symbolic. Coiffure, maquillage, parures de bijoux et saris de soie. Les préparatifs sont longs et minutieux. Chaque détail a une portée symbolique. in a long plait, complexion softened with pink blusher, crimson lips, eyes contoured with black eyeliner, palms of hands and soles of feet painted red, as well as the bindi, applied on the forehead. “The jewels are placed on each chakra so we are connected to the forces of the cosmos,” explains Jaykumaren, born in 1981 in Beau Bassin and whose mother, Shanta Devi Iyasamy, is a famous dancer. “The ‘nethi chutti,’ placed at the top of the forehead, represents the third eye, the eye of knowledge. At the front of the head, the two medallions – the Sun on the right, the Moon on the left – symbolise the dual nature and the quest for harmony between the masculine part and the feminine part inside us all.” The pupils repeat a series of movements in perfectly geometric twists. Their sparkling eyes accompany each gesture and mime the emotion and the meaning of the words hummed by the Guruji. “Where goes the hand, goes the gaze; where goes the gaze, poses the mind; where there is mind, settle down the sentiments; where sentiments rule sovereign, ‘rasa’ arises,” wrote the poet and theatrologist Nandikeshvara in The Mirror of Gesture. “‘Bharata’ (expression, music, rhythm) ‘Natyam’ (dance, theatre) is based on 108 postures or ‘Shiva dance steps’,” explains Michèle. “The positions of the hands and fingers express words, people, ideas or emotions. It’s a real alphabet! At once technical and expressive, this dance requires a long and difficult apprenticeship, knowledge of the myths that inspire the songs, and a form of spirituality.” THE COSMIC DANCE After two hours of preparation, the little troupe is ready. En route for the Hindu Spiritual Park, an important pilgrimage destination at Pointe des Lascars in the north, in a little oasis of vegetation where the Rempart river meets the Indian Ocean. “There is no lovelier place for dancing. Nature and dance are intimately linked,” smiles Jaykumaren, a graduate of the prestigious Kalakshetra School in Chennai, India, where dance and an austere lifestyle, only in nature, are taught inseparably.
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