Indian Classical Dance
Author: leela Venkataraman
Publisher: Niyogi, Rs2,500
This book offers well-researched historical accounts concluding with three very informative sections on teaching and learning; patronage and sponsorship; and complementarily to modern dance, writes UTPAl K BANERJEE
In reviewing the present book, it would be worthwhile to use the tenets of transactional analysis, introduced in the early 1960s. When Eric Berne blazed the trail of modern communications and psychological observations by defining three ego-states — ‘Parent’, ‘Adult’, and ‘Child’ — these were descriptive terms in a phenomenological sense, not related to their dictionary-meanings and much unlike Freudian id, ego and superego, which were mere concepts. Briefly speaking, ‘Parent’ taught concept, ‘Child’ felt concept and ‘Adult’ learned concept. In this book, the scholarly author leela Venkataraman painstakingly examines her enormous material from all three stances: In a varying point of view of the ‘Child’, or the ‘Parent’, or the ‘Adult’, in the transactional analytic sense.
After laying her ground in the introduction, she neatly divides her first few chapters to cover the commonly-known classical dance forms of India, recognised by Sangeet Natak Akademi (SNA) — Bharatanatyam, Kathak, Kathakali, Sattriya, Manipuri, Mohiniyattam, Kuchipudi and Odissi — in no particular order. She does not cover Kutiyatttam, the millennia-old dance-drama tradition of Kerala, recognised by UNESCO as India’s “intangible cultural heritage”. Nor does she analyse Vilasininatyam, the Andhra Devadasi tradition recently delved into for its crucial differences inlasya (mellowed movements), hasta-kshetra (hand-expansion space) and other important aspects from those of Andhra’s Kuchipudi. Also, regarding the three Chhau styles: Mayurbhanj (Odisha), Seraikela (Jharkhand) and Purulia (Bengal), which are veering round the corner for recognition of SNA with their sound stories, well-demarcated canons and clearly-defined music, there is no mention of Gaudiya Nritya of Bengal as well. This is just to note that these forms, too, deserve an encouraging word: To rise to their potential.
In her deservedly-long chapter on Bharatanatyam, the author’s stance is that of the wide-eyed ‘Child’ — overawed by her material on the long string of illustrious gurus who served the cause of the form. Her position is that of an un-self-aware ‘Child’: Noting the phenomena, but not delineating concepts such as elementary and advanced adavus, karanas and angaharas that are taught in the style. Nor does she differentiate between the strictly geometrical Pandanallur and its softer counterpart Vazhuvoor forms, within Bharatanatyam itself. These would’ve come in her stance as ‘Teacher’, which seems missing. Nevertheless, excellent chapters for several other dances describing their changing phenomena are seen from the stance of the curious and exploring ‘Child’ (cutely named as ‘little Professor’ in transactional analysis).
For instance, Kathakali (minus annotations on pure dance-elements Kalasam and the source-book Ramayana Sankshepam, held in common with Kutiyattam); Sattriya (sans reference to its original treatise Sri Hasta Muktabali by Shubhankara); Manipuri (without mentioning a legion of bhangi parengs for male and female dancers); and so on. In contrast, the solitary section on Kathak offers explanations on thata, tarkar, amad, lodi, gat and their ilk: As if from the stance of an instructing ‘Parent’: Most useful for the reader.
The book offers well-researched historical accounts — presented in a mixed bag, as can be seen above — concluding with three very informative sections on teaching and learning; patronage and sponsorship; and complementarily to modern dance. They contain fundamental insights into a feel for the body; acquiring skills rather than internalising the art form; re-inventing and re-negotiating mythologies; ‘sanitisation’ of sensuality; anguish of the deceived woman; situations where hate, anger, love, fear, disgust, remorse and sadness are all felt states of being; revulsion against mediocrity; need for discerning viewers; dance-forms as rituals; female dancer carrying the burden of history and subjected to the male gaze; traditional connections of divinity and spirituality; metaphors for today’s world; presentational imagination; and, above all, interaction and experimentation between what comes from the past and what flows from a contemporary situation.
The above are vital questions and tomes can be written on each. One can perhaps take the last issue alone: Having had a Renaissance, are Indian classical dances — like other Indian performing and visual arts — taking strides into modernityIJ Indian proscenium theatre began with mythology and had transited into flourishing regional theatres, spanning history, society and psychology, among others, with stylisation, improvisation and extraordinarily rich content-variation. Indian cinema saw daylight with the mythology of Raja Harishchandra and could now tackle, among all things, sperm donation and constitutional constipation! Indian painting, with heritages like Ajanta, can boast of Krishen Khanna: With emaciated faces gazing backwards from a moving truck — with deadpan looks. Indian classical music does not bother about the name’s limitation, because of the total freedom of improvisation and composition: Unimaginable in notated music.
The most notable factors in the other arts have been an unfettered freedom in creativity; exhilarating participation in the joy of novelty; occasional debilitating shocks of doom and gloom, allowing to rise like Phoenix from the ashes; and, most of all, the glory of both mass and class communication. In dances, first-generation gurus did ‘sanitisation’ in themes and costumes (Rukmini Devi in Bharatanatyam; Vempati Chinna Satyam in Kuchipudi; Kelucharan Mohapatra in Odissi; among others). The second generation needs to take courage into their hands and push hard at the “de-mythification” of themes, beyond those familiar to temple-audiences.
As once demonstrated by Sadanam Balakrishnan, Kathakali can discard its “willing suspension of disbelief” of accouterment (all right in the shimmering lamp-light within Padmanabhaswamy temple for the wonder-struck audience) and come to open proscenium: With its glorious aesthetics and immense capacity for story-telling. After shedding the shibboleths, it’s the grammar, aesthetics and enormous robustness of our dances, in all dimensions, that will win the day to make them wholesome and mainstream like the other arts. Can one think of “schools for choreography” to take forward the lead-dancers, akin to the course on theatre-direction, started by National School of DramaIJ Competent thought-leaders, including this author, need to wield their powerful pen — as ‘Adult’ from transactional analysis viewpoint — to usher in the beyond, post Renaissance.