Belly Dancing and The Art of Theatre

NSoJ Bureau

What does theatre have to do with belly dancing? A lot, says, radio and theatre personality, Ashish Sen. At a theatre workshop on Friday, July 26, in Bangalore, he showed the students of the National School of Journalism (NSoJ) exactly what he meant.

He began by asking the students to demonstrate what belly dancing is. Two brave first year undergraduate students, Upamanyu and Numan, sportingly went up on stage to show the audience their version of belly dancing -- leaving their fellow students (and the faculty), in splits! Mr Sen then went on to explain that the 'belly dancing' he meant was, in fact, an exercise in breath and voice control. He got his audience to inhale deeply and then exhale audibly while saying 'ha'. "Everyone, breathe in and breathe out saying 'ha', then 'haha' and last, 'hahaha', loudly," he said. Doing this led to the expansion and contraction of the abdominal muscles and, therefore 'belly dancing', he pointed out, to much laughter.

"Breathing right is important, in theatre. And so is voice modulation," Mr Sen stressed. "Theatre is not about sitting on a chair; theatre is around you. Theatre is life. To attract the audience, one must capture the mind by performing larger than life,” he declared.

The workshop also included an audition -- presided over by Mr Sen and the NSoJ Chairman, Timothy Franklyn, for two in-house productions. Students were divided into teams of three and asked to perform a scene from the play, Out at Sea. They were asked to interpret the script in their own way and present it in front of the audience. “After all, theatre is about interpretation,” Mr Sen added.

And did the audience like the workshop? “The workshop was a fun experience, I am looking forward to working with the team, ” said Roshini, a PG student.

Mr. Sen and Mr. Franklyn will soon announce the names of the students selected for the two forthcoming productions, Out at Sea and Aladdin.