Dancer, teacher and musician Justin Mccarthy, who started teaching piano when he was 14 and Bharatnatyam when he was 23, ends up becoming friends with all his students irrespective of their age. By Surabhi Jajodia
Adorned in formal attire, sparkling shoes matching the colour of the grand piano, eager eyes poring through the scripts and fingers ruling the piano artfully, musician and dancer-choreographer Justin McCarthy had us in thrall at the India International Centre over the weekend. His dramatic presentation, The Waltz as Remembrance, a talk-cum-piano recital on the evolution of waltz, using music by Schubert, Schuman, Chopin and Brahms, and a read-along of literary extracts, drew in his students and fans, aged between seven and 75.
From recalling the “souvenirs and memories,” much like the sound of a butterfly, which was taken from Henri De Regnier’s novel, to playing a folk song called Grandfather's Dance, he also shared one of his favourite lines from the novels he read on the show — “The delicious and always new pleasure of a useless past time.”
Asked about his idea of mixing both dance and literature and picking up lines from novels and weaving them with music, McCarthy says, “It’s a form which traverses the rhythms of waltz. The music is used to lend a poetic feel to the dance but not meant to be danced upon. It is a confluence of varying art forms to create something anew.”
Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Mccarthy was raised in a family he describes as “whiter-than-white” with a streak of his Irish melancholy. He learnt piano and received early dance training at the Berkeley School of Dance in San Francisco. Music was so intrinsic to his dance experience in his early years that he went on a hunger strike before his parents relented and got him a piano. Dancing aroused “a kind of structured euphoria,” but it was the Indian classical dance of Bharatnatyam that lured McCarthy to India. “Something struck me and I was totally taken over,” says McCarthy.
The incipient classical dancer was bewitched by a bucket and pitcher in an Indian bathroom. “I just loved that people bathed like elephants, hosing themselves in water. I understood I would have to squat to wash my clothes. Yet I felt so at home.” For the last 37 years, he has internalised Indian rituals, eating habits and his clothing: “I am very fond of daal and paneer and I dance in a dhoti. Moreover, I feel mostly like a local when I jump the queue.”
And so McCarthy began a second youth in India where he cultivated new friendships and honed his skills as a Bharatanatyam performer and teacher. And it paid off. One of his students, Shilpa, agrees: “He understands the dance so well that it doesn’t feel he is not an Indian.” Alongside perfecting his mudras, McCarthy studied Tamil, Carnatic and Hindustani music and even learnt to read Sanskrit. McCarthy was not only observing India through the exotic lens of orientalism — he felt a real kinship with its ancient civilisation and its multiplicity of art forms.
After the show ended, everyone from the audience came and met him, each of whom he knew. From young girls to a 70-year-old Sikh gentleman, his students proved that they were as dynamic as their guru. Some even gifted him books. The icing on the cake was when McCarthy, like a true artist and gentleman, read out a riddle to the accompaniment of music on the piano. That too on a random request. Clearly, there’s no end to challenging yourself and learning in the process.