A few of my favourite things: Dancing Shiva

Here’s another of my favourite things, from the Asian galleries at the British Museum. He’s a dancing Shiva – the Lord of the Dance, if you like.

Shiva dances in the British Museum

I just love the movement in this figure – his hair is flying out, and his whole body is moving, his arms elegantly upheld and his legs treading out the rhythm of the dance. The circle around him appears to flatten him, but when you look closely you see that he’s modelled firmly in the round – his body twisting round. And though the circle tries to contain him, all that movement is about to burst out of it into the world.

He’s a god of destruction and creation – both ending and beginning a cosmic cycle, a sort of Millennium god. When he appears like this, dancing, he has a second name – Nataraja; he’s a god of creative destruction, rather like Death in the tarot deck, a card which is much luckier than its name suggests. And he’s a god of grace and elegance despite his destructive side, unlike, say, Kali, who is just bloodthirsty and grotesque.

I always like to see this Shiva. He doesn’t have quite the sexy elegance of some of the apsara-figures in this gallery, with their clinging drapery, or the dro-dead bling of the Tibetan gilded gods. But his delightful movement and

By the way, this isn’t just an artistic miracle – it’s a miracle of craftsmanship, too, since the work was cast in a single piece. Go along the gallery to look at the most terrific Tibetan yab-yum sculpture – a tantric representation of the god Yamantaka and his shakti in sexual embrace. It’s a gleaming gilded sculpture full of ferocity and power and life. But if you go round the back, you’ll see the god’s twenty or so arms have been cast in two separate clusters and then slotted into rough sockets. No such cheating here!

(By the way, one of my other little favourites in this gallery is the Tibetan portable shrine – a sweet little cabinet which opens up to display tiny Buddha figures, each in its own niche. I’ve always been fascinated by furniture with secret drawers, spice boxes, tiny containers, wardrobes that open up on Narnia,  secret boxes – and this little shrine has it all, in the vibrant colours of red and gold.)

Photo by cheran on flickr