In this lesson, we will learn 10 benefits of learning Kathak.
- Makes you physically strong
- Helps in overcoming the stage fear
- Increases your ability to focus
- Makes you a good team worker
- Makes your brain sharp
- Helps improve your expressions
- Helps you learn Indian Culture and Heritage
- Makes you a better storyteller
- Helps you in better body balance through learning footwork
- Learning Kathak Mudras improves your hand movements
- Summary of Benefits of Learning Kathak
Makes you physically strong
Kathak, an Indian Classical dance form, helps to make the body of the individuals strong. It also helps in making the muscles stronger by learning the dance. The dance involves a lot of footwork, eye expressions and hand gestures. This makes the lower portion of the body strong; hand muscles also get their proper exercise. According to many studies, even the eye muscles get their proper exercise while giving the expressions or while practising them. This dance also refreshes the body and is a good substitute for other exercises like Zumba, aerobics and so on.
This dance form does not allow you to gain your body weight and keeps your body fit and muscles flexible. It also keeps the body toned and increases stamina to perform.
Helps in overcoming the stage fear
One of the major benefits of learning Kathak is that it gives you the opportunity to perform on a stage. The dance is performed at various shows in a professional manner. By performing it in front of a large audience alleviates your stage fear. It makes you confident and gives you conviction about your own abilities.
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Increases your ability to focus
Learning of this dance form helps to increase focus and concentration. This dance is full of nuanced movements of foot, eyes, hands and face. It requires a high degree of focus to learn these nuances. The regular practice needs a very high degree of focus which improves your ability to concentrate.
Makes you a good team worker
Kathak helps you become a good team worker. While performing this dance, you will have to co-ordinate with your musicians and other co-performers. This helps in your ability to become a good team player. The virtues of coordination and teamwork and togetherness are also learnt while doing this dance. This is one of the big benefits of learning Kathak as very few other skills require such a high level of co-ordination among different participants.
Makes your brain sharp
This dance form gives good exercise to the brain even as the dancer needs to memorise various steps and hand gestures. Also learning various Taals are also an important part of learning Kathak dance. Also, it makes one become expressive and extrovert while one learns this dance form.
Helps improve your expressions
In order to dance one also needs to put the exact expressions in the exact places. Expressions make the dance look more vibrant and graceful. The communication of each and every move in kathak is made more meaningful by giving proper expressions of happiness, sadness and so on. Learning of expressions is one of the most important reasons for learning Kathak.
Helps you learn Indian Culture and Heritage
This dance form helps to represent the art and culture of India and help it in carrying forward. Kathak dance form which started to spread as a dance of storytelling of mythological anecdotes helps us to represent the rich culture and heritage of India. This dance form represents the stories of Mahabharata and the Ramayana. These were particularly spread by the bards or the storytellers who were termed as Kathakars.
Makes you a better storyteller
The word Kathak cane up from the bards who used to move from one place to another telling the stories. They were known as the Kathakars. The word ‘Kathakar’ is a Sanskrit word which means story telling. Kathak, the dance form also came into existence from the Kathakars. This dance conveys various mythological stories through their dances, foot works and hand gestures.
Representation of mythological tales of Mahabharata and Ramayana, Vedic literature is an important reason why this dance form is learnt.
Helps you in better body balance through learning footwork
Learning of classical dances like Kathak helps in doing foot-works which are mostly done in various rhythms and laya. This dance form has various laya in which the footwork is done by the kathak dancers. Learning of these foot-works makes the dance look more graceful and neat.
Learning Kathak Mudras improves your hand movements
Learning of Mudras or hand gestures in Kathak is also one benefit to the dancer. This dance includes the learning of both Samyukta hastas or hand gestures and also the Asamyukta hastas or hand gestures. Various mudras represent various objects.
Mudras in Kathak also help to convey various feelings to the audiences. Hence learning of hand gestures is extremely important in making this dance give its completeness.
Summary of Benefits of Learning Kathak
This dance form has several benefits. Especially learning Kathak from early childhood becomes extremely useful in later years of life. It helps to strengthen muscles, make mind and body strong from very formative ages which is essential in the growing phases of a child. It makes the child self-disciplined, they learn the virtue of teamwork, self-discipline. Apart from that as these dance form needs quite a long time to learn it helps them to even build a career as they grow older. Although any dance or art cannot be limited to ages, learning it during childhood is more beneficial because of the time they get to completely become an expert. For adults also to learn it goes for a great dance form to opt for.
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