From Bharatanatyam and Kathak to Manipuri and Kuchipudi, classical dance enthusiasts were in for a veritable treat at the Khajuraho dance festival, Ankita Jain captures the mood
A couple of hours from Delhi to Jhasi, followed by another long day of rickety bus rides, that’s a total of 11 arduous hours spent so far on the road and here we are at Khajuraho, a remote village a few years ago with few travellers is now on the tourist map. The sun’s rays are still strong and the day shows no signs of coming to an end. Khajuraho is glowing as if the lights will never be put off in this hamlet. There’s a sense of cosiness, as if the place is transfixed in time, but a chilly wind is a reminder of the travails of time.
With the hope of capturing the evening sun, we venture out, only to find the sun still bright, though the wind in the valley has become much stronger and the temperature has dropped. I take a post-prandial walk around the village. With only a few hundred people living here, I stumble upon a huge wooden door, the main gate to the ongoing 43rd edition of Khajuraho dance festival.
As I move towards the main stage, the curtains rise as the troupe leader of the Pung Cholom dance team blows the conch. Men in dhothis come on stage and bow to the audience. A pung, Manipuri name for drum, hangs around each dancer’s neck.
The dance begins as a sway and gradually as the tempo of the drum beats rises, the dancers jump and twirl high up in the air. We sit glued to our seats as Pung Cholom, a Manipuri classical dance, is performed under lubna Marium, artistic director of a classical cultural organisation, Shadhona from Bangladesh. “This year, we are inviting Bangladesh to showcase their culture and to celebrate the spirit of dance in musical extravaganza of Khajuraho,” Rahul Rastogi, assistant Director of the festival.
later in the evening smoke fills up the stage at Khajuraho. And in the course of three hours, five distinct dance styles — Bharatanatyam, Kathak and Kuchipudi — were performed sequentially. Generally, one would be wary of a mixed bag evening of this kind but the clean lines and firm footwork of Bharatanatyam dancer Rukmini Vijayakumar, who begins the evening with an enactment of Shiva and Parvati’s love story, calms even the possible dissenters. Dressed in a bright yellow and green costume, she offers flower petals to Shiva in her pushpanjali. Rukmini traversed the length and breadth of the stage maintaining fine lines along with her sound nritta. Rukmini was followed by Kathak exponent Rasmani from Bhopal who performed a narrative piece on Shiva. After the clarity of technique showcased by Rukmini, Rasmani’s recital, which was her own choreography, bordered on being theatrical. While expression is definitely her forte, one searched for a balance between abhinaya and footwork in the recital. The choice of music for the piece was also not compelling.
After the performance, in an elaborative conversation with Rukmini, she discloses that dance for her is a way of life, beyond her performances, choreographies and teachings. “I started dancing very young. I didn’t think I would do it as a profession until much later,” she recollects. When she took a year off after high school, her choices laid the foundation. “I went to college, but that one year off became two years and in the third year, I decided to apply to the dance college and did my bachelor in fine arts in dance,” she states. Was it an easy decision to makeIJ “It was one of the hardest decisions because science, contrary to popular thinking, was easy for me. It came to me naturally and a safe career choice. If I studied and became an architect, I would get a job but in performing arts, it is very different as you have to make your own path. It is scarier but it is much more exciting and challenging to take an uncertain career and chart your path. So far it has been good to me,” she says. Rukmini skillfully manages to balance traditional Bharatanatyam and contemporary dance. “I think they (modern and traditional dance) exist in separate worlds for me. I have been doing a lot more Bharatanatyam than contemporary. I work on some modern pieces in a year but usually present it once or twice, solo and in front of a close and small audience. Bharatanatyam takes me all over the world. I have been performing as a solo artiste for more than 10 years and my dance company has been there for the last five years,” she states. Do your performances overlapIJ “I try to keep my vocabulary separate. People presume that I use contemporary dance but I would say that is just presumption. In Bharatanatyam, I use a lot of karanas, which are ancient systems of movement. Now they use adavus in Bharatanatyam and karanas are what Padma Subrahmanyam researched. One of her senior most students was one of my very influential gurus,” explains Rukmini and adds, “My training in ballet and modern has allowed me to be physically in connect with my body. My contemporary dance doesn’t intrude into my Bharatanatyam and my Bharatanatyam doesn’t enter my contemporary.” Her mother, the first woman pilot of Karnataka, was also dancing, but didn’t take it up professionally. “My mother is my first inspiration,” says Rukmini. Her role as a teacher comes with a huge responsibility to motivate and encourage young dancers. “It is also big commitment because you have to make sure your children also progress. I took a while and waited till my solo performance was in a place. I just started teaching last year,"”she says.
Rukmini affirms her training is unique. “Children start when they are five and I want them to do everything that I couldn’t do,” she says with a smile. A fitness freak, Rukmini turns impatient seeing lazy people. “I think the only thing that bothers me is complacency. When people are complacent or lazy, it bothers me. People generally say, ‘I will get something done’ and they don’t have a valid reason not to do it and they don’t do it because they don’t care or they don’t work hard enough.” Talking about the fusion scene, the artiste affirms, “Every art form has to change and without change, it will get stagnant. That being said, I modify my costumes, but it is still traditional.”
What do we define as traditional, she asks and adds, “Is it post medieval or what came in the 17th century or because 17th century costumes were different from what we consider traditional. It was changed to something else, now if people change we can’t blame them. Of course, it looks odd to watch someone wear t-shirt and jeans or shorts and do Bharatanatyam. And to be honest, even if they do that with right artistic motivation and the audience was moved and felt something, then you can’t fault it. But doing it just for effects is pointless. But I don’t see a reason to judge every little change you make. I don’t believe in fusing for the sake of fusion. Every art form has a heartbeat of its own. If you want it to come together, it has to be a proper marriage of sorts. There is one person who has brought contemporary dance and Kathak together; Akram Khan. If you call it fusion, that is stunning.” As contemporary dance (being a secular form) makes waves across India's art circuit, foundations dedicated to the arts have taken it on board swiftly but mostly at the expense of the classical arts. we ask whether modern dance forms have impacted Bharatanatyam detrimentally. “I don’t think it has. I think classical Indian dance still has a stronger audience than contemporary dance. It is popular dance, commercial dance, like Bollywood, which has overpowered all forms of performing arts and concert art forms. All concert art forms have been overpowered by Bollywood, commercial dancing, television and the movies. The media is such that it engages you in a different way. Classical dance forms have always been for a smaller population. I think both find their own niches.”
About her performance on Shiva, she explains, “According to myth, Shiva is the cosmic dancer. However, in order to explore whether Shiva has always been at the pinnacle of importance in dance, it is interesting to trace Nataraja’s history in that context. Nataraja has played an important role in the South Indian religious tradition for centuries. I choreographed the Shiva dance three years ago and have performed several times in between. Its easier to redo once you have mastered over it.”