`Dance is an experience'
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Bharatanatyam exponent Malavika Sarukkai on reinventing the traditional through choreography.
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Malavika Sarukkai: My language, vocabulary and alphabet are classical, but my thinking is contemporary.
BHARATANATYAM HAS surely found its most challenging and contemporary expression in Malavika Sarukkai. For her this classical art is not to be equated with a fixed repertoire, which happened to evolve under certain social and historical circumstances. Dance for her is more of an eloquent language through which she tries to "express her innermost feelings." At a time when many dancers turn out to be clones, Malavika is, as one critic put it, "the last of the original dancers."
"Did someone really say this about me? Yes, it is not easy to produce a traditional dancer. There must be a kind of drive, a fire within the person. You cannot tell another person `I have it why don't you too.' I wish more dancers would be original, the arts need it," she says.
Malavika has been a dancer for more than 30 years. At this stage, of what she cannot call simply a career, for it is more of a passion, dance is not entertainment. "I do not want to entertain. What I want to do with dancing is to turn it into an experience for me and for the audience. Very often when I am on stage I feel that I am not performing but experiencing those precious moments."
Tightrope walk
Malavika has created contemporary presentations that re-invent the traditional, through choreography. She has been quick to realise that her art has to evolve to survive. And she has managed to strike a perfect balance while walking the tightrope of the traditional and the contemporary. "Tradition in India, at least, is seen as one that allows change, demands change. If one is to say tradition and nothing more, everything comes to a halt, an abrupt end. The magic and dynamism of the Indian classical dance style or music is that tradition is always one that allows change, demands change, celebrates change. Of course, it has to be within tradition. You know we think of tradition and change, and not tradition or change. My language, vocabulary and alphabet are classical, but my thinking is contemporary. So, if you have a contemporary mind and a classical alphabet, if you really cherish your tradition, respect it, then you can create. The moment you start thinking that everything should be traditional, all boxed into little boxes you find it difficult to get out. Your mind refuses to evolve, it does not allow elasticity, it turns rigid."
Rooted in tradition
Malavika's dance is rooted in tradition. And when she creates, she uses this bedrock of tradition because she has faith that she will find here what she is seeking for. And, as an example, she refers to her piece based on the story of Salumrada Thimakka, a labourer who planted 247 banyan trees on either sides of a small village road in Karnataka. "This is her story, I am not saying anything new. When I read this, I said to myself here is a woman of our own times. I wanted to talk about her. It was something very valid, traditional, and something phenomenal. For me she stood for so many things. Human endeavour; of a woman who turned grief into fulfilment. It spoke about the ecological side also."
Choreography
Then, when she went about choreographing, Malavika found that she needed a `mudra' that spoke about the tall trees. "I could not find one that conveyed the reach and strength, longing and grandeur of the tall trees in the classical alphabet. I had to work on finding a gesture. So I had to find it within the classical alphabet but adapt it."
However, Malavika does not believe that dance is a personal statement. "If I create pieces that would be totally cerebral and dance, and if nobody in the audience is touched, there is no meaning. For me, dancing is communicating my emotions, thought, feelings. I want my audience to be part of it."
Along with the evolvement of classical dance there has been a drastic change in aharya or the concept of costume and make-up. Fancy, bright, costumes, hair-do and make-up, it is often said, tends to distract the viewer from the dance to the dancer. Malavika, who speaks as eloquently as her dancing says, "I don't think aharya is very important in solo Bharatanatyam. It is more closely associated with dance drama where each character comes on stage with different aharya. Although in Bharatanatyam, we often say angika, vachika, aharya and satvika, I feel that angika is the most important. Vachika is dialogue as in theatre. In dance, this is removed to the musicians, a slight displacement. A dancer does not change the aharya according to the characters he or she presents on the stage. And satvika is intense emotions. That is what we need to adapt."
Art scene
In the art scene it is very easy to give up. It is also easy to take the trodden path. To be different, one needs to work hard. "You have to take the risks and trust your faith. You have to have burning faith.
"A dancer needs to develop will power to sustain. You may have to go on training for long years and still ask yourself `Will I be able to sustain it.' You need to train a whole lifetime to make your body your instrument. I will train all my life so that when I pluck that string it will resonate with sruthi.The body and the movements will have to have that sruthi. It is an individual pursuit."
K. Pradeep
Photo: H. Vibhu
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