My teacher comes from Sri Lanka and mainly teaches dances that describe the life of Lord Krishna and his love Raddha.

The dance is executed normally in a half sitting position (the space between your bent knees should resemble a square on its top) and is very hard to learn for North European people. First there are learned the basic steps for a long period before starting with combinations of steps.

To tell stories, you use facial expressions as well as closing, opening or rolling of the eyes and hand movements (called Mudras) in rapid changes. In between these story telling parts of the dance there is mostly a smaller part that only consists of rhythmic dancing that only interpretes the music and has no meaning by itself.

The time to learn all these is long but learning in itself is a pleasure. You find yourself involved in a different culture and thinking, at least once a week.

And if you know some German, you might want to have a look at my instruction for beginners (in German), so that you can start your training right here and now.