Maybe its the dancer or Maybe its the dance the dancer dances

I'm in Chennai these days and 2 evenings back, wife and me happened to drive through a particularily old part of Mylapore called the RK Mutt road and a chance glance to the left into a old school there got us into a bharatnatyam performance by 2 lil girls. The descriptions on the board were elaborate and we decided to park the car and spend sometime encouraging the amateurs. The show started off with a pushpanjali, alaripu followed by invocation to the various vedic/puranic deities. The girls had to keep the stamina going along with emotive correctess with the humid evening only adding to the challenge. The vocalist, the mridangam player and the violinist who enthusiastically played along were completely oblivious to the fact that the hall was not even 20 percent occupied. Within a matter of minutes, they were transported into a different world, a different dimension where the audiences didnt matter, thunderous appalauses were not the logical end of a dream and "I still cant hear you" rock acts dont exist.
Later that evening, it rained and the loud diesel engine stalled willingly in a familiar lane quietened by the drizzle. Should artists need audiences to keep the spirit going? Can they continue nevertheless as they trance themselves into a plane where the act and the actor complement each other? My thoughts reached out to another evening almost 15 years back in a small town in Kerala where talented Kathakali artists perfomed a night-out as they became one with the lord and in the morning, the make-up wore off and they returned to the known world. A movie made some time back called vanaprastham tried to tackle this topic: An artist's alternate existence therefore becomes his true being as he flits between 2 worlds trying to define what is his real world - As an artist who plays positive divine characters as he dons his robes as opposed to his difficult existence in his daytime penury battling life's realities. He finds his alter-ego being able to transcend all societal rules by donning his robes and connecting with a love struck hallucinating audience member, a royalty from the Travancore royal family. The audience then has a tough task at hand to connect with the artist at this level.