Why are shoes such a big issue for Indian dance?
I AM GLAD YOU ASKED - and this is what I’ve been taught.
We wear bells on our ankles and they’re our instruments. You wouldn’t put your shoes on a piano or a harp or a saxophone. It’s just something you respect and want to keep clean.
Also, Indians, along with other cultures, take their shoes off to pray. You don’t want to bring extra impurities into a place of worship like a temple or deraser. Taking off shoes is a sign of respect.
When we dance, we dance barefoot to show respect for the Earth. She allows us space to slap our feet and move, so we remove our shoes because she has provided a holy space for us.
This is what I’ve learned in my 13 years of Kathak. Also wearing bells with shoes just feels wrong - maybe that’s an innate cultural thing.
cinderella marries the prince
and it’s… fine. The prince is great! They’re in love, he’s very sweet and passionate, writing her poems and songs, giving her anything she wants. The time she spends with her husband is great.
but cinderella is not royalty, her family was noble but she never spent time in those circles. She’s used to being busy, she’s used to cooking and cleaning and mending. There are hours, days, where she has nothing to do.
time passes. cinderella learns the fancy lady type of needlework. Learns to ride horses. Reads a lot.
as is normal for royalty at the time, they travel and are hosted by nobles or stay at castles owned by the king. But even that variety begins to become routine. The prince is distracted, there’s a lot of young women living and working on their route. Daughters of nobles. Younger and prettier with soft hands that have never done a day’s work.
cinderella needs something to spend her time on, and there’s a part of her thinking a couple-only trip might get her husband’s attention again, so she suggests making an old castle that’s fallen into disrepair their “project.” It was built in the time when castles were made to be defensible, so it’s quite sturdy, but it’s overgrown and secluded. The prince doesn’t know why his family stopped living there either. A hundred years ago it was their summer home.
so they go. And they work. And for a while it’s great! But when they leave for winter cinderella’s husband forgets her once again. cinderella resolves to make the best of her life and stop worrying about a man who has gotten what he wanted from her.
summer comes again and this time cinderella goes alone to the old castle (minus staff, of course, but cinderella manages to narrow it down to only repair workers and one maid). She can cook and clean and mend again, but this time it’s her own choice. She is happy.
this summer they make more progress on repairs. The workers say that most of it can be salvaged, except one tower that’s been completely overgrown with vines and briars. It will have to come down, eventually, but for now it can be safely ignored.
cinderella has more free time now. The old castle has a surprisingly untouched library, though time and moisture have damaged many of the books. Behind a collection of greek poetry cinderella finds an old diary. Very old, in fact, at least a hundred years. It’s rude to read a diary, of course, but whoever wrote this is long dead, and cinderella is bored, so…
from the description of activities the author looks to have been nobility. Maybe even a princess. She’s sensitive and sweet and smarter than she seems to realize. If circumstances had been different cinderella wishes they could have been friends…
after the summer ends cinderella returns to her husband. He’s spending a lot of time with a young musician and cinderella can’t even work up the energy to care. She does some research about the castle and the family she’s married into, finds out the name of the princess who wrote the diary.
aurora. Cursed and forgotten. She died young, they say, in a plague that also took out the castle staff and her own parents. Luckily they avoided a succession crisis, but not so lucky for the dead.
time passes. cinderella goes to the old castle again and again, even out of season. Soon enough all that remains to be done is the old tower, and the builders say they should tear it down and fill the gaps before it gets cold.
one night cinderella is restless. The princess from the diary had been fond of that tower, and cinderella is far more attached to a dead woman than she ought to be. She gets out of bed, reads by candlelight, and finally goes to walk the empty halls.
she finds herself going to the tower. Pushing past the vines that don’t seem so troublesome really. They almost part before her. The stairs are perfectly intact, the door at the top is already cracked open. As if she should have done this years ago, cinderella steps into aurora’s bedroom.
she’s as beautiful as the stories say. And sitting under her hands, crossed across her stomach as it rises and falls, is a book of greek poetry.
years later, people will tell the story of cinderella as a cautionary one. Don’t seek above your station. Don’t marry for prestige. After all, a girl who grew up as a servant once married the crown prince, and disappeared after only three years. She ran away, they say, she couldn’t handle the lifestyle.
two old women who run a bookshop together agree with the lesson. Marrying for the wrong reasons never ends well. It’s best to wait for someone you have things in common with, shared interests.
or, failing that, the more linguistic of the two says, wait a decade or ten for someone to fall in love with you from your diary.
her partner laughs and hits her with the socks she is mending.
did u know: according to scientists, in October the mitochondria turns into the frightochondria and becomes the haunted house of the cell
"do you think i can slap myself with my foot?"
(in the middle of class) *the sharpest inhale ever* "BANANA BOND!!!"
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"for years, i thought my cat was male. turns out she was female. i found out when she gave birth to kittens."
"WRITE THAT DOWN WRITE THAT DOWN"
"gandalf's "YOU SHALL NOT PASS" but its the cfal teachers saying it."
"how many pedos are on the pedophilia audio?" "pedo pedo pedo pedo pedophilia" "..." "did you not count?" "nO?"
"this pen. its very blue."
"this is why YKB's retiring."
"implicit orgasms are superior to explicit orgasms."
being aromantic is like. hey btw you're going to live a life that is the culmination of most of society's worst nightmares. sorry lol ✌️ but then you turn around and take a really good hard look at it and it turns out that living in that nightmare is fucking awesome and you get to wake up every day and take that fear that other people have and laugh and hold it close until it's a great joy for you instead. and being happy is a radical act that you define instead of someone else. and you're sexy as fuck that's just a fact of life i don't make the rules on that one
your cum does not impress me dr watson
my roman empire is the cool girl monologue from gone girl
You must be fooling yourself if you don’t think your morally-grey love interest doesn’t lay on the chest of the individual they love. You’re going to tell me that it’s always Poppy laying on Casteel’s chest? That Rhys doesn’t seek that sort of comfort with Feyre? Cardan not crawling over Jude to get her attention and just lying there soaking up the fact that she’s his wife? I don’t believe it for a minute.
My “draw the squad” memes so far
the clear mental image i have of me and my friends in our catholic school rolling up our skirts and putting on mascara right under a virgin mary statue is so picturesque it’s almost cliche. but religious schools are just like that
"it doesn't matter. I have books, new books, and I can bear anything as long as there are books."
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