The significance of multidisciplinary approach to classical dance

Expanding the movement vocabulary will enrich the body, mind and practice

There is a firm belief among some practitioners of dance in India that a comprehensive and holistic approach to the study of dance is also a multidisciplinary one. The International Bureau of Education defines a ‘multidisciplinary approach’ as one that “focuses primarily on different disciplines and the diverse perspectives they bring to illustrate a topic, theme or issue.” A multidisciplinary curriculum is one “where the same topic is studied from the viewpoint of more than one discipline.” Such an approach to dance, therefore, would include perspectives from more than one movement art. Dance, as is well known, has two dimensions, one bodily or physical and the other mental. So, the multidisciplinary approach to dance is also best viewed as a two-pronged one. First, it concerns the dancing body. Here ‘multidisciplinary’ could mean understanding the bodily aspects of one’s primary dance form through the additional learning of other dance styles or movement disciplines. Learning other forms expands the body’s physical vocabulary and increases its versatility since different dance forms lay stress on different aspects of muscle strength and offer different kinds of body conditioning in terms of flexibility, balance, reflexes, instinctive awareness, breathing, and so on.