The vedics believed that dance was a direct connection to the spiritual.

This dancer, Shalini Patnaik, blows me away, and it is hard to think you are not in contact with something divine when she dances. The sitar player is Anouska Shankar, daughter of the legendary Ravi Skankar, and she is no slouch in the music department either. They are all really grooving on this music, and the good vibrations are strong all round. Anoushka Shankar is an interesting gal, because she has managed to cross over into various different culture’s musical traditions, and create music with other musical artists, without sacrificing one iota of her musical integrity. The result is pure magic, time and time again.Vedic music explores the relationship between the forces of chaos and those of order. Other traditions have similar juxtapositions built in; the result is a harmonious blending of primal forces of yin/yang energies. Sometimes there is frenzy and chaos in evidence, at others the rhythm of life flows as gracefully through the music as water from a mountain top towards the sea.

Alla Kushnir dances to Setanta’s Black Magic Woman

Aren’t these ladies beautiful? I think Byron had someone like this in mind when he wrote She Walks In Beauty, in 1814.

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes:

Thus mellow’d to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.