Home, not the world
Dev S. Sukumar
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Veenapani Chawla, who is constantly negotiating traditional and contemporary forms in her theatre collective Adi Shakti in Pondicherry, says Prabhu Deva's dance is inspired by Tapattam Dalit performers rather than Michael Jackson
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PHOTO: SAMPATH KUMAR G.P.
NOT GROUNDED Veenapani Chawla: `Most traditional performers are living in this false world where they think they have the West for an audience'
Just before boarding the train for Delhi, Veenapani Chawla remarked: "What a beautiful thought!" The comment was lost in the din of the railway station; the train loudly blew its nose and wiggled its body as it prepared for the long crawl to the capital.
So many railway stations, so many trains, so many long waits. The Bangalore Railway Station was a first-time in that long list, and she was charmed. Her watch said 6 p.m., so it was time to go, and that ended a brief trip to a city where, less than 24 hours ago, she was holding forth on the importance of art to fund itself.
The occasion was The Sir Ratan Tata Trust Colloquium on Arts Management, organised by the Attakalari Centre for Movement Arts. There were many heavyweights from theatre and art world, mostly engaged in discussing whether art should be supported by government/ private funding; or whether it should find its own resources. As a legend in theatre for her innovations on stage and for founding Adi Shakti, the theatre commune in Pondicherry, Veenapani Chawla's experiences were particularly relevant. In fact, Adishakti has extended its research activity into disciplines like old construction technologies, traditional medicine and instrument-building, apart from creating its own performance texts.
Patrons wanted
"Art has to be patronised," said Jagadish Raja, Bangalore's well-known theatre person. "In Britain only three per cent of the 80,000 artistes belonging to Equity (an artistes' union) are employed. Britain runs a lottery, a large proportion of the revenue goes towards funding artists. No theatre company can become a business."
What a year for Veenapani to be born, 1947. As old as India, the nation-state. And when your parents are from Punjab and you have grown up in Bombay, the memories of the Nation and individual are inseparable. It always used to be this "strange situation of what do we choose, where do we go? Where do we put value - in the West, or our way of seeing things?"
Then the Sixties and Delhi University. Very exciting times, and then she became a "lapsed Marxist". At the end of the Sixties, after an intense involvement with Marxism, she gave it up. She had found another way which was much more fulfilling. Thought became action, so she went to the interiors of Kerala, Orissa, Manipur, looked for dance and martial art forms, and studied under gurus.
Veena would go alone. Trains to far-off places, buses in the middle of the night, travelling cheap... because there was no money. She learnt Kalari and Koodiyattam in Kerala. Those were "wonderful years of excessive freedom". There was no time for appearance, and she didn't care anyway... "and it was one of the most liberating experiences — to forget how you look, your face..."
The beginning of the Eighties, and she and a friend created Adi Shakti in Bombay. By 1993, it had shifted to Pondicherry.
"Why are all of you not-for-profit organisations?" a chartered accountant asked at Attakalari. "Why can't you create a business that can sustain itself?"
"Artistes have never earned money through ticketing. They have always depended on funding," a European choreographer said.
"What about Michael Jackson," persisted the chartered accountant.
Adi Shakti keeps its art pure by not depending on patrons for a livelihood. They perform for a professional fee, but their sustenance comes from the guesthouse they've built on the campus. Visitors can stay there for a fee, but Veenapani ensures that their guests are mostly artistes. They don't want to get into resort business.
Excerpts from a conversation at the railway station:
Is it necessary for folk and traditional arts to reinvent themselves to a contemporary context?
That's how Adi Shakti works, to dialogue with tradition, with old knowledges, in the assumption that the contemporary is in the privileged position to critique because I see traditional form as a language.
Nothing needs to remain the way it is. Consider the way folk has contributed to Tamil cinema — we think that Prabhu Deva's choreography comes from Michael Jackson. We're wrong. It comes from Dalit performers called Tapattam performers. Its rhythms and base styles are absolutely unbelievable. That's where Tamil cinema finds its form. It comes from Kargattam, women dancing in the most uninhibited way, using pelvic movements and so on... Tapattam rhythms have informed Tamil cinema so deeply. And what about Gana Pat — Tamil songs come from this tradition. That has contributed so much to Tamil cinema.
So whether there are conscious efforts or not, folk adapts itself to modernity?
Folk offers itself — it enriches contemporary work. What we have to do is help individuals. What happens to the performer? I have a shadow puppeteer in my campus, the last survivor of his generation, from Tanjavur. He has no children and is very old — what's going to happen to his form? So we're getting people to work with him. We're trying to evolve his form for our work. We can get him students and apprentices, and help him expand it, by doing different things. Let him see how we use his form in a different way, and maybe it'll feed into his practise and make it interesting for people outside Tamil Nadu, who might otherwise see him as a curiosity, just like people in the West look at Koodiyattam. After a decade that fashion will fade — what will happen to the Koodiyattam performer? He'll have lost his audience in India and his audience in the West. Most traditional performers are living in this false world where they think they have the West for an audience. But basically artistes have to have audiences first on their home ground.
You've talked about the `Malady of Purism', that we've given up local hybridity to keep our traditions `pure' to protect it from Colonialism and Globalisation.
I'd say there is a paralysis of the form, and I'd attribute it to the fact that too much focus was given to tradition after 1947 by the State, which wanted to promote historical India as the face of India. They catapulted these forms and they travelled to the West. And the West said `Ah, this is fantastic,' and we stayed stuck in that `fantastic' image of ourselves.
The dialogue between traditional and contemporary is a dialogue between two equitable partners. We do not patronise the traditional, and the tradition does not look down upon the contemporary.
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