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Cultural flavour of Japan

LEELA VENKATARAMAN

The Japan Cultural Month in New Delhi presented some pleasing dance recitals. Besides there was an impressive Mohiniattam performance by Vinitha Nedungadi

WINSOME Masako Ono won many hearts with her Odissi recital.

In the true spirit of cultural exchange, the Japan Cultural Month in India has a reciprocal, concurrently running Indian Cultural Month in Japan. At the Japanese Embassy, flagging off the celebrations in style, was the traditional music Gagaku of the Japanese Imperial Court, which from its 7th Century origins to its final evolution in the 10th Century, has been nurtured within guilds comprising traditional families. Hailing from China and Korea, the word means "elegant music" and the Otonowakai group from Kyoto trained by the Court to perform at all State functions, represents a living national treasure of Japan. Ceremony and grandeur surround the seating of the musicians who play instruments of hoary origin like houshi (special mouth organ), so (Japanese harp), biwa (lute), kako and taiko (drums) shoko (bronze gong), ryuteki (flute) and hichiriki (oboe). One of the two styles played, namely Togaku or Tang music, is said to have Central Asian and Indian influences spread through Buddhism. The other, Komagaku, is now only an accompaniment for the dance. Both music and dance are characterised by the aesthetics of a stringent minimalism demanding full concentration and serenity in performer and audience - sadly wanting in the latter with chattering guests. The dazzling costumes and colours were striking.

Masako's Odissi

The Embassy presented another programme of Odissi by a winsome Japanese performer, Masako Ono. Her pencil-slim figure clad in a tasteful costume moved with supreme grace and balance. The full leg stretches and sweeps seen in Siva Panchakshara were clearly in the heightened mode patented by the Nrityagram dancers (the dancer was trained by Nrityagram's Bijoyini Satpathy), though the dancer herself acknowledges only the late Kelucharan Mohapatra (from whom she learned a few items) as guru. The Matangi stuti in mangalacharan and the Bilahari pallavi were competently rendered. While the dancer's bodily stances are evocative, her facial expressions too, given the phlegmatic Japanese countenance not known for wearing the heart on the sleeve, are mobile. Masako's own modern choreography inspired by the haiku Flying Butterfly and Durga as metaphor for empowered womanhood, were interestingly different in dance tone. One would like to see Masako perform to an ashtapadi with live music.

Apathy dogs dancers

Obsessive insularity amongst Indian dancers, isolating most from any happening beyond the narrow orbit of one's own discipline, can be the only explanation for the scanty Habitat turnout for a talk substantiated with video screenings, by Janaki Patrik, an American Kathak dancer and disciple of Pandit Birju Maharaj, the event being sponsored by the Kri Foundation. Here is a scholar/dancer, seriously working at exploring bridges between the Indian and American aesthetic. Trying to negotiate limits within tradition, exploring how far a form can be pushed to reach cosmopolitan audiences, without divesting it of its identity, is challenging. Janaki's Kathtap, a Kathak/Tap dance confluence, was interactive. With musical insights honed by her Western music expertise, Janaki's experiments with melodic structures for dance using piano, tabla, sitar, sarangi, and Jazz and Hindustani music, forms yet another side of her art exploration. In Mandala 10, based on the Rig Vedic chant observing the tonal variations and prescribed syllabic accenting, Creation as emerging from Nada-Brahmam, with sound reverberations enveloping the entire space, is visualised through Ramli Ibrahim's group choreography with dance inspired by Ballet, Odissi, Manipuri, Chhau and what have you. In `Get Together', a Kathak/Modern Dance confluence, Kali stuti and Ravana's Shiva stotram, one recognises Kathak seed phrases like Dha Taka Thunga expanding into multi-movement images, evocative of the raw power of Kali and Shiva. More dancers being present could have triggered more animated discussion. Seeing just a half hour performance before rushing to the Habitat, by Vinitha Nedungadi, a Mohiniattam disciple of Kalamandalam Kshemavathy, at the India International Centre, sufficed in recognising a complete , mature dancer. The ragamalika Ganesh stuti, a composition of Kavalam Narayana Panikkar, had a folksy lilt to metre and music, the very starting invocation extending to dance narratives on Shiva/Ganga, Ravana's lifting of Mount Kailasa helping reunite Parvati, peeved over Ganga's presence, with Shiva. With navarasanjali also projecting Vinitha's internalised abhinaya strength, pure nritta items were lacking.

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