Celebrating Magnificence in our ‘Ohana: Janani on Musings on the Dance of Transformation

March 2025 

Introduction By Renée Tillotson

A celebration known in India as Maha Shivaratri took place February 25/26 of 2025: the vigil night of Shiva. In our Still & Moving Center almanac, this whole week is devoted to Shiva’s Dance of Transformation. The idea of self-transformation inspires everything we do at Still & Moving Center. Our motto “Claim your magnificence!” exhorts all of us to transform ourselves – to make the changes to become our best selves and live our lives the way we truly want to live.

Jananai Lakshmanan is our Bharatanatyam dance performer and Indian cultural advisor at Still & Moving Center. She recently spoke at our Gems from the Wisdom Traditions conversation on the topic of Shiva’s Dance of Transformation. Our conversation impelled Janani to write and share this thought piece “Musings on the Dance of Transformation”. She wrote while staying awake all of last night in observance of Maha Shivaratri:

Musings on the Dance of Transformation

By Janani Lakshmanan

I write to you from the dawn as I keep my vigil. 

It is Maha Shivaratri — the Great Night of Shiva — a festival commemorating the events of as many legends as there are people observing it, often keeping vigil throughout the night, as I have done. Some say this is the night that Shiva and Parvati wed, dancing in celestial harmony. Some venerate Shiva, the savior of the devas, who swallowed a deadly poison that threatened to kill them all and clasped it in his throat, turning it blue. Many simply call this the night when Shiva destroys evildoers and restores harmony to life.

Certainly, it is a night for dance, the legends all agree. Hence, this is the occasion that heralds the two-week-long Natyanjali Festival at Chidambaram, a town in Tamil Nadu, India. In 2018, I had the privilege of performing at Chidambaram, and the experience was miraculous. I came to offer the Shanmukhapriya Varnam in praise of Nataraja presiding over his golden hall, a piece I had dreamed of showcasing at that very spot. 

I still remember how awake I felt that midnight many years ago, as I climbed the steps to take the stage for the next hour; how I felt no longer human, but an instrument on which the God of Dance – Shiva Nataraja – drummed out a merry rhythm.

At a recent Ala Moana Centerstage performance, with my dance sisters in the Aloha Natyam group of Bharatanatyam dancers, I had a very similar feeling. My left earring flew out of my ear, which wouldn’t necessarily be worth mentioning if not for the Shiva legend of Thiruvalangadu. 

In that legend, Shiva Nataraja and his wife Parvati challenged each other to a friendly dance battle, each challenging the other to mimic his or her dance movement. During their competition, Nataraja lost his left earring, then swiftly picked it up with his left foot and put it back in his ear without losing a beat. At that point, his wife Parvati laughingly admitted defeat, unable to mimic that movement herself. This particular statue of Shiva Nataraja with his left foot raised aloft memorializes that dance.

Although losing my earring at our Ala Moana Centerstage performance really annoyed me at the time, upon reflection, I realized that I had unwittingly reenacted a portion of that Shiva Nataja legend… at least I lost my left earring, even though I did not retrieve  it with my left foot while continuing to dance!

Admittedly, today as I write, it is now six in the morning, and I feel quite human indeed, and somewhat less awake than I did when performing 7 years ago, or even when performing a Shiva dance at Centerstage recently. 

But this Maha Shivaratri night is meant to be kept sacred, like a fast from sleep, spent in contemplation, worship, and dance. I will keep my fast as long as my fingers continue plucking out this tune on my laptop keyboard. 

I write to you from my parent’s home in Arizona, where I grew up. I’m visiting to celebrate the 21st anniversary of Sampradaya Dance of India, directed by my guru, Nita Mallya. This momentous anniversary of her dance performance troop happily coincides with Maha Shivaratri.

Last Saturday from the warmth of my childhood home, I had the joy of gathering online with many of my Still & Moving Center family members for the Gems from the Wisdom Traditions conversation circle. We conversed about the very Dance of Transformation which is said to have taken place last night for the Maha Shivaratri celebration. 

I spoke with them about the Pancha Sabha, the five dance halls of Shiva Nataraja, each corresponding to its own dance. At the end of my talk, I was honored to hear others share their reflections on the Dance of Transformation. The concept took on both mythological and personal significance. We toyed with the notion that all transformation is a dance. We considered whether a dance should be thought of as several movements strung together in sequence or a series of isolated poses connected, and we tentatively concluded that all dance is, in fact, transformation.

As I drove myself to dance rehearsal for the anniversary that evening of our Gems conversation, I kept turning the circle’s topic over in my mind. Shiva Nataraja has always been a study in contrasts: destructive and creative, formless and defined, still and moving. His innate Oneness is not in question, ever in unchanging duality.

And it is only in the liminal space of six in the morning that I can truly consider the constancy of Transformation, and grasp it in my mind with the requisite delicacy. As a Dancer, a storyteller, I find it familiar — it is the breath that flutters in every tale, that keeps it alive and never quite the same every time it is told. And we are, each and every one of us, an epic.