Aishwarya's dance performance

Last weekend I escaped my apartment for a short time (perhaps 45 minutes total) to go watch Aishwarya's dance performance. She is a friend who works at school with me who has been practicing traditional Indian dance for the past 18 years. We walked in a bit late, and it took me a few minutes to actually accept that the woman on stage was actually the Aish that I normally see laughing and smiling. Immaculately made up, with a head dress of fake flowers and an extension added into her braid, she seemed like a different being. I was drawn in by her facial expressions - feeling that I understood part of the story despite not having any clue what she was actually dancing about. A later inquiry revealed she was dancing one section of the Ramayana - a great Indian epic, a section which the website Aish directed me to said the following:

Years pass and Rama, Sita and Lakshman are very happy in the forest. Rama and Lakshman destroy the rakshasas (evil creatures) who disturb the sages in their meditations. One day a rakshasa princess tries to seduce Rama, and Lakshmana wounds her and drives her away. She returns to her brother Ravana, the ten-headed ruler of Lanka (Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon), and tells her brother (who has a weakness for beautiful women) about lovely Sita. Ravana devises a plan to abduct Sita. He sends a magical golden deer which Sita desires. Rama and Lakshman go off to hunt the deer, first drawing a protective circle around Sita and warning her she will be safe as long as she does not step outside the circle. As they go off, Ravana (who can change his shape) appears as a holy man begging alms. The moment Sita steps outside the circle to give him food, Ravana grabs her and carries her off the his kingdom in Lanka.                               from this Ramayana Summary if you want more detail

 Despite my great lack of knowledge I still felt like I understood a good part of the emotion of the story as Aish danced around in a circle, stomping her feet in time to the live music provided by a quartet and making the bells on her ankles ring, then holding precise poses. Emotions that included supplication, denial, sadness, surprise, and more. Aishwarya took me through several emotions as I watched, an escape from a rather mundane weekend.