Healing Moves

It was an effort to protect herself from injury that led ballet dancer Soraya Franco to start what is now known as Yoga Dance Technique (YDT). When the half-French,half-Spanish Franco moved to India in 2001,she practised Mohiniattam and Bharatanatyam on concrete floors in South India. “Dancers face many injuries. YDT started as a method to protect myself from these injuries,” says Franco,who gave a performance at IIC on Wednesday.

YDT combines the postures and movements of traditional yoga asanas with Indian classical dance forms,ballet and contemporary dance to create a therapeutic choreography. “I do not mix things. It is basically an application of one art form to another. The difference is reflected in the mind and breathing pattern of the students,” shares the 40-year-old Franco,who has been teaching the technique for seven years. Her classes begin with a session of yoga followed by the fluid forms of YDT.

Wednesday’s lecture-demonstration began with a two-minute piece called Purush and Prakirti by Franco and a student Shubro Ghosh,followed by solo by her. The audience was also taken through to the theory of yoga before Franco and five other dancers presented a series of yoga dance pieces.