DANCE
Heart of a woman
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"Salabhanjika", by Pallavi Krishnan, is a discerning contribution to both gender issues and to the aesthetics of Mohiniattam, says SOORYA BHATTACHARYA.
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A PACKED audience at the Nehru Centre, Mumbai, was glued to their seats on March 8 when "Salabhanjika", the new thematic group choreography in Mohiniattam, was presented. It was the first of the three-day national ballet festival by Smitalaya, to celebrate International Women's Day. "Salabhanjika" was choreographed by noted Mohiniattam exponent Pallavi Krishnan, under the aegis of the Union Department of Culture, Delhi.
Salabhanjika is a sculpture, a woman, generally kept at the entrance of the sanctum sanctorum in Hindu temples as a guard (Dwarapalika). All temple sculptures are not Salabhanjikas, but all Salabhanjikas are temple sculptures. "Salabhanjika" tells the story of the eternal love of a woman, based on various shades of conflict, pain, short-lived happiness, dreams and aspirations in the mind of the poet. The poet uses his imaginative freedom to doubt the presence of the spirit of Ahalya in this particular stone that inculcates the feminine charm of the sculpture.
Ahalya, cursed by her husband, Gautama, is turned into stone. A sculptor, looking for a suitable piece of stone to make a Salabhanjika, discovers this one in a dense forest. Working tirelessly on it, he fashions a female shape, enjoying its beauty as it developed. The result is a captivating Salabhanjika, to be placed in front of a Sri Rama temple. Despite the metamorphosis of the stone, Ahalya's identity remained the same.
Because of Ahalya's presence, the sculpture assumes all the feminine graces and feelings, and the constant physical and mental intimacy between him and Salabhanjika resulted in a sense of mutual possession and a split personality within the stone between Ahalya and Salabhanjika. This is an imaginary saga of the intimate conflicts of the human heart — Ahalya, the cursed spirit, longing for salvation while the Salabhanjika longs for togetherness — a contrast of bondage and moksha, of earthly love and spiritual divinity. Ahalya's effect on Rama is like the Salabhanjika's effect on the sculptor.
Every human being passes through temporary transformation in the drama of life, but even while the transformation goes on everyone has the same personality in the recesses of his or her existence. Ahalya's waiting for Rama for her salvation symbolises the liberation from all bondages, which is believed to be the ultimate aim of human life.
The dance begins with devadasis offering arati at a temple in a dense forest. Enthralled by the Salabhanjika in front of the sanctum, they wonder over her feminine grace, and ask who the sculptor was. It ends by asking some deep and philosophical questions about our existence. Are all women of today Ahalya-s? Do they suppress their feelings amid male domination? Or are they compelled to do so? How sensitive and relevant is their personality at both micro and macro levels? Does commitment to the lover lead to lifelong bondage?
Mohiniyattam, also known as "the dance of the enchantress", was revived in the 1950s and 1960s. But it was regarded as a poor relation of Bharatanatyam, even in Kerala. Thus , there have rarely been any group dances in Mohiniyattam, and few attempts have been made to develop its choreography, apart from that of Tagore's "Rituranga", with its captivating blend of Rabindra Sangeet of West Bengal and Sopana Sangeet of Kerala. Choreographed in 1999 and presented by Pallavi Krishnan, the success of "Rituranga" was, in her own words, "my inspiration for this philosophical work within a restricted structure of a classical format".
This art form was revived by the efforts of poet Vallathol Narayana Menon and Mukunda Raja in the Kerala Kalamandalam. Veteran theatre director and Malayalam poet Kavalam Narayanan Panikkar worked to bring the repertoire of Mohiniyattam back to the virtually extinct old Kerala tradition, and to revive the then prevalent Kerala music tradition known as Sopana Sangeet. It was Kavalam who wrote the poetry of "Salabhanjika", which was conceived by Natyashastra scholar C.P. Unnikrishnan. Music director Darshan Raman and Kathakali singer Kalamandalam Hyder Ali composed the music.
In this production of "Salabhanjika", the central character, was performed by Pallavi Krishnan. The role of the sculptor was performed by Kolkata-based Suvasish Dutta, a well-known Bharatanatyam exponent. Chandrima Mitra played the sculpture while the other dancers were Manjushree Moitre, who also designed the costumes, Poornima Chowdhury, Uma Nisha Singh, Shiuli Bhattacharya and Tania Guha. The art direction and special lighting effects of Samkutty Pattamkari, of the School of Drama, enhanced the visual and dramatic aspects of the performance.
Bharatanatyam techniques and traces of Kathakali movements were cleverly incorporated to depict the masculine character of the sculptor, while all the other seven dancers adhered to classical Mohiniattam style, embracing its soft and subtle movements. Arresting and assimilating voice over in English enhanced the universality of this thematic choreography and made it easier to comprehend. Salabhanjika is a discerning contribution by a female Indian dancer to the issues of women at large, and a valuable contribution to the little known thematic aesthetics of Mohiniattam.
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