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Of art and the personal equation

What do Madhavi Mudgal and Alarmel Valli have in common apart from their passion for dance? Read on

SAKHIS IN ARMS For Madhavi Mudgal (left) and Alarmel Valli, all work means more play Photo: VINO JOHN

Good friends have little to say to one another. Particularly when you think alike, believe in the same ideals and have the same kind of commitment to the arts. Madhavi Mudgal and Alarmel Valli first met as youngsters way back in the 1970s, when they both performed at the Sangeet Natak Akademi's Young Dancers' Festival. They have been working together for the last 16 years on "Samanvaya".

Meera Mohanty brought the like-minded duo together for a Take Two.

Valli: Now, what do we have in common? Let's see, we both love pasta, Mediterranean and Italian food...

Madhavi: We both love good food! And then there is "Samanvaya."

Valli: I think the most significant thing about this work, is coming together at different levels — artistic and personal.

Madhavi: Without personal equations, you can't do it. You have to respect each other's art and share common aesthetic perceptions.

Valli: Ideologically too, we share a lot. Music, for both of us, is the key to our understanding of dance. Also, there are no pretensions, no doing things because it's politically correct or fashionable.

Valli: And how much work has gone into it! At times we've worked on one movement for hours. And the costumes! Ordering the saris, matching colours, matching weaves...

Valli: You have discerning taste. I marvel at how of all the hundreds of saris in a shop, you will unerringly put her finger on that one sari which will be perfect. I wonder, "my eyes flitted over it 10 times, how come I didn't pick it out?"

Madhavi: It's all right if you get tired of them I can always palm off a few. We have traditional taste. But then, tradition too evolves. It's true of dance too. These classifications into contemporary and modern are Western and I don't think they should apply to us. The point of our tradition is that it keeps on changing. That is the norm that even Bharata said: "These are some rules but you go ahead and make your own." If there are no boundaries, there is freedom. And we are contemporary women. We were not born into the devadasi tradition that we had to dance; we chose it as form of expression.

Valli: If you didn't have the talent, I'm sure your father would have stopped you.

Madhavi: Yes, I am sure. There was no dancer in the family. I was studying architecture.

Valli: I wanted to be a scientist; Maybe a diplomat, so that I could travel. It was only natural that we became dancers. But, with the kind of training we received, there was no compromising.

Madhavi: And also the work we put in. Remember the first workshop with Guru Kelucharan?

Valli: He would start work at ten, and go on and on, sometimes till two in the morning. He always reached his creative best late in the night.

Madhavi: When I look back, I think we were lucky to have been able to interact with such great masters. Not just our gurus, but also the great musicians.

Valli: True. Whether it was Kelubabu, my guru Chokkalingam Pillai, Subbaraya Pillai or Balasaraswati... The saddest thing is that talented young people today are not exposed to such greatness. Look at M.S. Subbulakshmi. I had the good fortune of not just listening to her, but speaking to her from time to time.

Madhavi: And how simple these people were. We are a little somebody...

Valli: ... like a mustard seed. You can never be greater than the dance. It's from W.B. Yeats. Something like... "How can you know the dancer from the dance," that is the idea.

Madhavi: But both of us have also been lucky to have parents for whom art has been greater than anything else. And good friends and good husbands.

Valli: Yes, Vinay is certainly one of the least chauvinistic men I know. I think I can say the same about Bhaskar. They don't make any demands.

Madhavi: Demands tho chod do, the kind of freedom we have. We are hardly ideal wives. But dance is involvement at so many levels: visual, aesthetic, intellectual, psychological, physical, emotional, but ultimately everything should be working towards the spiritual.

Valli: Yes, but I think in today's scenario it's also important to have proper infrastructure. I wish young people, would choose different careers. For instance, they could be presenters, lighting designers, art administrators or art managers... there are so many ways in which you can be involved. For the country to be economically successful, you need creativity, in whichever field it may be. Even industry has accepted this. That's why we are all being invited to give talks about exploring your creative self and what not.

Madhavi: People are in a hurry these days. You have to fire the gold, to purify it. But what worries me is not dancers but the level of appreciation. We need a discerning audience.

Valli: But dancers also have a responsibility. Why dance to the gallery? T. M. Krishna said this in a lecture, "We say that the audience want this, but the audience didn't come and ask you to dumb it down. Who cultivated that taste?" The tendency to veer towards either overtly gimmicky or dramatised pieces is because subtlety, understatement and high aesthetics call for a great deal of involvement and concentration on the part of the audience. If you want to shut your mind and just watch it like you would watch a soap opera or talk show, you can't do that.

Madhavi: Rasika means involvement, it is symbiotic, a shared experience. The dancer and the audience have to be sahridaya...

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