The vicious cycle of sixteen

A dancer’s take on keeping time

Image Credits: Utsav Mamoria (Tumse Na Ho Paayega)

This flash essay is part of a collaborative, constrained-writing challenge undertaken by some members of the Bangalore Substack Writers Group. Each of us examined the concept of ‘TIME’ through our unique perspective, distilled into roughly 400 words. At the bottom of this snippet, you’ll find links to other essays by fellow writers.

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When starting a classical form, whether dance or music, we learn rhythm with cycles of four beats. Four, is the rhythm of the universe; we are taught. Butterflies flap their wings in beats of four, the wind blows in beats of four, the world revolves in beats of four, or so we say.

The game now is simple: there is a metronome that taps sixteen times, four into four. Once it hits sixteen, the count starts from one again. These sixteen beats loop infinitely. For a dancer, this is what time sounds like. Here is the game — make a pattern of beats that have to end when the metronome hits one.

Shall we try? Play this. Let’s first start counting one set of sixteen beats. When the next round of sixteen starts, let's say this pattern with it: 123, 123, 123, 1234, 1234. Make sure that you count with the beats — when you say 1, the metronome strikes one, when you say 2, the metronome strikes 2, and so on.

Did it end on one?

Now listen to this pattern.

Felt longer, no? Longer, not because it takes more seconds, longer because it takes more beats. Instead of completing the pattern in one round of sixteen, we took three rounds of sixteen.

You are at a concert. A Kathak dancer is on stage. On the left of them is a clan of musicians; a tabla player, a sitarist, a singer with harmonium, and someone who recites the words the dancer dances to. All four will, with their own instrument, play cycles of sixteen beats. A tap, a strum, a key and a voice. Once they begin to play, sixteen beats, like a metronome, are created — a constant, uniform, hum. When they begin, the second hand on your wristwatch, the tapping of your neighbour's foot and the fan whirring above your head will all fall prey to that vicious cycle of sixteen.

The dancer is the disruptor. Within those sixteen beats they will create innumerous, complicated, rule defying patterns. In what ways will they fracture the harmonious humdrum of sixteen? How many rhythms will they express with their instrument — the body? If you want to see time, watch a dancer.

A good showcase of rhythmic mastery will award the dancer with a “Wah!” from the audience. The dancer will return the compliment with a pause. The musicians will stop playing. A moment of silence. But that silence is a farce, for you forget we are in the world of the vicious cycle of sixteen – a metronome that even the clock cannot resist. Even in silence, the rhythm, like the revolution of planets, continues. The silence is broken by the tabla player's tap, not on the first, but on the fifth beat. In that moment of silence, a butterfly flapped its wings once, a single gust of air blew by, and the Earth rotated on its axis. That one moment of dance made time move while standing still.

To read more stories on ‘time’ by the Bangalore Substack Writers Group, scroll below

• “So… When will shit actually hit the fan?” by Sailee, sunny climate stormy climate

• Time: I Just Want to See It, Watch It Move by Abhishek Singh, The Comic Dreamer

• Timekeepers - Retracing the Universe’s Deep-Time Signatures by Devayani Khare, Geosophy

• Keeping Time by Reshma Apte, Fanciful Senorita

• Locating Myself In The Map of Time by Priyanka Sacheti, A Home For Homeless Thoughts

• The Thing We Pretend To Understand by Avinash Shenoy, OfftheWalls

• The lost intimacy with time by Siddharth Batra, Siddharth’s substack

• Lessons Time Taught Me by Aryan Kavan Gowda, Wonderings of a Wanderer

• A Time for Worship by Vaibhav Gupta, Thorough and Unkempt

• “Tata Mummy Tata” by Rakhi Anil, Rakhi’s Substack

• How long is twenty years? by Richa Vadini Singh, Here’s What I Think

• How mystery writers play with the clock by Gowri N Kishore, About Murder, She Wrote

• TIME INFLATED, JUSTICE DEFLATED. by Lavina G, The Nexus Terrain

• What keeps the fool in me delighted by Rahul Singh, Mehfil

• The endless ebb and flow of Time by Siddarth RG, Siddarth’s Newsletter

• Time, please! by Shaili Desai - Litcurry