Now, I don’t want to delve into the standard explanations about the importance of arts in early education—you can easily ChatGPT that answer. Instead, I’d like to share my unique perspective as a science-trained dance educator.
Recently, I listened to a conversation between Mr. Nikhil Kamath and Mr. Kumar Mangalam Birla, a prominent business leader. While discussing entrepreneurship, Mr. Birla emphasized the critical role of creativity. It was an intriguing exchange as Nikhil Kamath, himself a highly successful entrepreneur, highlighted efficiency and resilience as key traits for success. Yet, Mr. Birla consistently brought the discussion back to the importance of creativity. (Catch the discussion at 5:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6FqC4pWy8I)
This resonated deeply with me. As someone whose creativity was nurtured by years of dance training, I’ve experienced firsthand how it has shaped both my personal and professional life. Over time, I’ve come to see how this applies not just to science, as in my case, but to all professions. Hearing Mr. Birla underscore this skill as a cornerstone of entrepreneurship reaffirmed my belief that creativity is a vital skill for personal and professional development.
Here’s the bad news: creativity cannot be taught. But the great news? Everyone is born with it. As parents and educators, our role is to nurture and channel this innate gift from a young age.
Would it be too bold to claim that art is the best way to tame creativity? I’m not sure. But it’s undeniably one of the most effective. Drawing is often the first artistic tool we give children, enabling them to express their thoughts visually. However, we need more than just one medium for expression. Think of it like language—knowing multiple languages expands your vocabulary and broadens your ability to communicate. Similarly, exposing children to diverse formats of expressing themselves enables them to communicate effectively.
Importance of Arts
As a student of Indian classical dance, I advocate for the dance form as an artistic medium to effectively nurture creativity. Indian classical dance undoubtedly encompasses all the benefits that arts bring to early education. Cognitive development, emotional expression, cultural awareness, interdisciplinary skills, confidence, communication, perseverance, and discipline—these are all benefits of artistic engagement (reference: ChatGPT 😉). In addition, the art form offers a richly structured vocabulary which can be explored as a format of expression, just like a language.
Hand gestures of Indian dance
While many art forms nurture creativity, Indian classical dance offers an especially unique opportunity to cultivate this skill through its structured vocabulary of hand gestures. The hand gestures of Indian dance have been scripted in many texts, one of them being the 15th-century text Abhinaya Darpanam. This text classifies the hand gestures (hasta mudras) into Asamyutha (single-hand) and Samyutha (double-hand) gestures. These hand gestures, performed in space and time, can depict everything from the tangible to the abstract. Each gesture is meticulously described, including examples of what it can represent. Traditionally, only students of dance have had access to and studied this language of hand gestures as part of their dance training.
Activity books on hand gestures
In my view, the language of hand gestures serves as an artistic communication tool that can be explored by every creative mind, irrespective of prior interest in learning dance. Therefore, my advocacy is to make the vocabulary of hand gestures from Indian dance, accessible to all children by presenting it in a simple, engaging manner.
The activity books I’ve authored under Natya Chittra achieve this by introducing hand gestures and their creative applications through vivid illustrations. These books transform the Sanskrit texts of Abhinaya Darpanam into an engaging, visual format tied to concepts that naturally encourage self-learning and creative exploration. Given below is a page from the activity book omn hand gestures. The left side of the page shows an illustration of a hand gesture, its name and its depictive meaning given as also an illustration. On the right, is an immersive scene with uncoloured line drawings. The line drawings invite the child to colour into it. In the process also engages the child to use the respective hand gesture (in this case pataka) to show the elements illustrated by the line drawing, like clouds, horse, ripples, etc. Thus by blending tradition with modern teaching methods, these books offer children a playful and effective way to explore creative expression.
So, why limit early education arts to drawing and scribbling? Let’s broaden the scope to include diverse artistic tools. Natya Chittra’s activity books can guide kindergarten teachers to easily introduce this language of hand gestures to their children, regardless of the teacher’s familiarity with Indian classical dance.
In my next post, I’ll dive deeper into practical ways to integrate hand gestures into classroom settings, and how this approach can unlock new dimensions of creativity in young learners.