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Photo: Murali kumar k.

Different strokes Sonal Mansingh: ‘My education gave me life, it taught me to be a fighter. Today, education takes life’

Sonal, whose name has become synonymous with Odissi, started off learning Bharatanatya from the late U.R. Krishna Rao and his late wife Chandra Bhaga Devi. Odissi came in much later and she learnt from Kelu Babu (Kelucharan Mohapatra).

“In the ’80s people heard more of my Odissi than Bharatanatya. My group that practised Bharatanatya in Delhi, disintegrated due to age, marriage, health and so on. It’s so difficult to get musicians from the south. Wish I could do as much Bharatanatya as I could in the past. I love both the forms. They are like my two eyes. I can’t blink and look away.”

The renowned danseuse insists she still is a victim of prejudice. “The prejudice about dancers is still there in the minds of the people. Six years ago I was having a rehearsal at home. This lady who lived on the floor below hurled abuse at me, calling me ‘nachne wali’.” says Sonal who grew up with artistes like “Rukmini amma and Bade Ghulam Ali khan visiting my home.”

For Sonal, who ran away from home to learn Bharatanatya, “Dance is a way of life for me. My performances are always works in progress. You should have a constant relationship with dance.”

Sonal describes herself as “an enthusiastic teacher. Today, if a teacher hits a student, she will have a case slapped on her. I’ve been slapped by Kelu Babu just because I fell asleep at 2 a.m. waiting for him to come and teach me. I was a Padma Bhushan awardee at that time. But that did not make any difference to him or to me. I still fell at his feet and endured his harsh treatment and he still was my teacher. But today it will not happen. I am not saying all this to prove that I am great but just that times are changing.”

When did the dancer become a social activist? “Social activism happened in Natya Shastra when Bharata begins his story about the Samudra Manthana. The message is about the churning of life; about churning and drinking poison before you can get to some place. In the past performers had liberty to satirise kings. Dance and social activism are not separate,”says Sonal who believes that schools should include performing arts into their curriculum.

“Schools are different today. In my time, I went to a Gujarati school, where sports, music and dance was all integrated into the curriculum. Today, there is a demand for grades. My education gave me life, it taught me to be a fighter. Today, education takes life. See the number of suicides due to low grades!”

Of her latest performance set to film tunes, she says: “The genre does not matter as long as there is content. Hari Prasad Chaurasia is a classical musician who has also done contemporary music. There comes a point when dance overtakes life. My logic was if film songs portray the same feelings , can they be interpreted by a classical dancer? Is there a difference in the way Helen and Sonal interpret the dance? I thought, why not use what is familiar as a window to give a glimpse of the classical world? And dance is not long faced. Even the Upanishads are full of funny stories.”

Doesn’t that dilute the originality of the form? “Tell me what is pure? For me anything that is aesthetically appealing is art. No one has the authority to negate any creative endeavour,” says Sonal, who is impressed with the number of dance schools popping up. “Let a thousand flowers bloom. Those that are beautiful will attract attention and those that are not will wither away gradually.”

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