Dance theatre is the in thing. Or is it the inner urge? Some classical dancers express their views
Photo: R. Ragu
Stretching the margins A scene from Navtej Johar’s "Fanaa"
Becoming a regular at classical dance performances is like joining a club. The same faces in the audiences pop up every time. But think dance theatre, and not only the canvas of work, but also the audience, generates unpredictable variables. Knowing
who is the director and who are the performers might influence the flow of audience, but the theme of the production is of prime concern. Because, as Anita Ratnam, Bharatanatyam exponent, and one of the first in India to seriously develop her work as dance theatre, points out, “Dance theatre tries to speak in common language.” Conversely, dance language is characteristically esoteric.
Converting the format
Classical dancers, says Anita, who premiered “Daughters of the Ocean” in the late 1980s, have a strong literary background which helps them convert the musical format to the spoken word. Bharatanatyam dancers have an edge here. “I find Bharatanatyam dancers, compared to other dancers, have a strong emphasis on educational background.” To express certain themes, a dancer needs to transcend – not abandon – the dance technique. “For those who are seriously searching, this will be the first area they develop,” Anita says.
Her views are echoed by Seema Agarwal, who collaborated with theatre director Abhilash Pillai on “Rabi’a” that got an award at the Mahindra Theatre Festival.
When she performed the work in Chennai her audience – much of the “typically Bharatanatyam” crowd – asked why she did not use the regular Bharatanatyam format. “I said I don’t think Bharatanatyam is insufficient in any way, but I chose to do it this way,” she says. “I didn’t say I am or am not doing Bharatanatyam. All I say is, it’s a production by a Bharatanatyam dancer.” Seema elaborates, “I think in Bharatanatyam. How that language evolves in that particular production is another thing altogether. I cannot do Rabi’a and do it like Radha.”
“Fanaa” by Navtej Johar, another Bharatanatyam dancer, broke new ground a couple of years ago as a multi-lingual, multi-genre production fusing Sufi thought with Madhur Bhakti of South India. When people ask him to define his work he calls it dance theatre, though Seema and Anita refrain from labelling their productions.
Labels apart, the thought, in all these cases, is the driving factor. But some dancers take up the medium just to appear contemporary. If dance theatre is merely a fad, says Anita, “that fad will go away.” But, as Navtej puts it, in some cases it is an “organic” movement towards something new. Some initiate a mass churning. Like Mallika Sarabhai of Darpana, Ahmedabad, who shook up the academy in its 50th year, making her dancers speak, her musicians act, because it was time to step out of the ‘repertoire’ mode. Some step out when they turn conventional thought on its head, like Geeta Chandran in her dance theatre production that sheds kindly light on Kaikeyi.
Vociferous and lyrical
For Navtej, the path to dance was through street theatre. Having worked with Badal Sircar among others, he felt the medium, while “exciting and vital” was “too vociferous” and was in search of something more “lyrical”. Thus he came to Kalakshetra, Chennai, for Bharatanatyam training. But he found classical dance “too sanitised and too lyrical”. Today the knowledge that both have their significance and their limitations is the backbone of his performance philosophy.
Anita feels, “You have to let go of your ego and be able to collaborate with an equal. It’s not about hiring.” Seema counts the advantages of “so many energies” together. Besides Pillai and light designer Gautam Majumdar, she rehearsed extensively with Sumantro Sengupta, a visual artist with theatre experience. “Just a small criticism was enough to send me on a different track.” Anita stresses the need to take time. “Even if it takes two years, it’s okay.”Just as Navtej conducts workshops for dancers and theatre actors, knowing the former’s need to lose their inhibitions while the latter’s need to be “a little more focussed”, Anita points out that dancers are too used to orchestral backing. “We as a people find it difficult to work with silence and without rhythm. But if we are seriously thinking of dance theatre we need to look at the rhythm of the heart, the pulse.”
Experimenting sometimes means falling. Says Anita, “It’s to be plagued with doubts, maybe fail, but through that you move forward.” You need the guts to “dive into chaos,” she asserts, but dancers who “want to look beautiful and pretty all the time” can’t expect to break free of limitations. India is a “fantastic fertile ground for potent work,” says Anita.
“The time now is ripe for us to just pluck from our environment and bring the resonance into our work. But for that we have to be prepared to let go.”
ANJANA RAJAN
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