Name : Amelia Golda Fortuna

Std. No : 18/431631/SV/15602

My response to the general lecture of Ms. Gomathi Boorada presentation:

First of all, I want to say that Ms. Boorada material presentation was very great and interesting
that we could know more about India’s history and culture. It was a great opportunity for me to
learn and knew something new about India’s culture. Also, the way she brought her presentation
was easy to learn, so I didn’t get bored and always pay attention to her.

For the first material, she presented a great and popular history in India that was Mahabharata and
Ramayana. However, I was more interested with Ramayana history because it taught me that
Ramayana was not just a story, but also an educational medium to demonstrate the importance in
our society of values, such as loving and respecting your family, keeping your promises, protecting
the weak and so on. Through Hindu mythology, the Ramayana, as a medium to teach young
generations about values, morals, and ethics. As we know, in this era young generations have been
changed, therefore I strongly agreed with Ms. Boorada that the connection (communication)
between the children and parents are really important to establish a good and concord family.

Besides, I also learned a good value through Ramayana history that is about Ravana. As known he
was a grabber person that he ignored every good word, he only heard what he wanted to his greed.
He didn’t see boundaries until he lost his brother, son and entire of his family. He ruined his life
because he always put on his ego. From this, I could take a good value that “Whatever we do in
the past, it will back to us in the future in the different form or circle”. Also, we need to learn how
to deal with these problems (greed, jealousy, anger, lust, ego, etc).
My response to dance and costume presentation as well as the dance workshop:

Indian classical dances are as diverse as Indian culture and it’s so amazing and truly insane. For
me, it was actually same with my high expectations about Indian dance. I got goosebumps while
watching their performance at that time and it was like I was watching Indian drama dance. As we
know that in Indian drama, the dancers have powerful movements and follow the sequence
movements beautifully.

From the material presented about the classical dance, there was a dance named Kuchipudi.
Kuchipudi was a classical Indian dance that combines music, dancing, and acting to present a scene
from Hindu scripture, myth or legend. Also, there are three essential elements in classical Indian
dance:

 Abhinaya: The ‘Abhinaya’ is general to all the classical Indian dance forms. It makes the
dance form attractive and meaningful.
 Nritta and Nritya: ‘Nritta’ and ‘Nritya’ are the two categorizations of the techniques of
dancing. ‘Nritta’ is the law and methodology of human movement. ‘Nritta’ encompasses
the technique of rendering the rhythm through the movements which have certain
meanings.
 Jatiswaram. In this sequence, present a pure dance, performed rhythmically to a musical
raga.

Towards the dancer’s costume, I think it was very beautiful and of course we can hear the bells
sound very clearly. Women’s dresses involve a customized sari, a significant amount of jewelry,
including bangles, rings, earrings, and unique ornaments for the arms and head, anklets, ankle
bells. Their movements and foot beats with those attributes make them different from others.

During the dance workshop, I could say that was so fun and interesting to learn and I was able to
memorize what they taught me. However, the difficulty during this workshop was I have to
memorize so many detail movements in only one part. Also, the footsteps made my foot hurt, but
I think it was because my first time so I still okay with that. Overall, I really enjoyed to learn and
tried this classical dance and I hope I could come to India one day.