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`Why dance to the gallery?'

Madhavi Mudgal and Alarmel Valli, Odissi and Bharatanatyam exponents who have been working together for years now, feel sad that young talents no longer get exposed to the great maestros

HUMILITY Madhavi Mudgal and Alarmel Valli strongly believe that an individual can never be bigger than the form PHOTO: VINO JOHN

Madhavi Mudgal and Alarmel Valli go back a long way. They first met as youngsters in the 1970s, when they both performed at the Sangeet Natak Akademi's Young Dancers' Festival. Valli still remembers her mother praising this "elegant, petite girl who danced with such finesse". That little girl was then a Kathak student. She and Alarmel Valli have been working together for the last 16 years on Samanvaya. This is a project in which both explore parallel expressions of the deeper common structure underlying all dance expressions, using the warp and weft of Bharatanatya and Odissi. Meera Mohanty brought the like-minded two together for a Take Two.

Alarmel: 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.

Alarmel: 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.

Alarmel: 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.

Madhavi: 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...

Alarmel: You have a discerning taste. As for me, I have to see a whole lot of saris before I choose.

Madhavi: We have traditional tastes. But then tradition also 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. 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 a form of expression.

Alarmel: 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, and I didn't sing. I was studying architecture.

Alarmel: I wanted to be a scientist; I was asking questions all the time. The other choice was to be a diplomat, so that I could travel extensively. 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?

Alarmel: 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 I have grown up with.

Alarmel: True. Kelubabu, my guru Chokkalingam Pillai, Subbaraya Pillai or Balasaraswathi, they were such fantastic artistes. It's really sad that youngsters do not have the exposure to such greatness. Interacting with maestros makes a big difference to one's perspective. For instance, 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.

Alarmel: The philosophy is that you can never be greater than the form itself. That's what W.B. Yeats said, isn't it? "How can you know the dancer from the dance... "

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.

Alarmel: Yes. Vinay is certainly one of the least chauvinistic men I've known. 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.

Alarmel: 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. In Hindi, we say: "Usme tapke na... " 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.

Alarmel: 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, I don't think it's possible.

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

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