Lavani which is a traditional dance form of Maharashtra emerged from a historical context where the women dancers often danced for a male audience. This is also true of some other classical dance forms in India like Kathak which was largely performed by the courtesans for the royal men. However, unlike Kathak, Lavani did not go through a phase of rigorous classicisation which might be the reason why it still retains a huge element of unabashed sensuality in its practice. Often reduced to being an “item number” in reality shows and mainstream media, it is not everyday that the Bangalore audience is treated to a real life Lavani experience. Last Sunday, the Kali Billi Productions from Mumbai presented their dance-drama titled “Sangeet Bari” at Space Untitled, JP Nagar. The name “Sangeet Bari”, as told in the performance, traditionally refers to the theatres that would host Lavani shows. Performatively tracing the social history of Lavani in Maharashtra, this dance-drama alternates between dramatized reading and Lavani numbers. The reading is performed in Hindi with generous servings of wit and humour by the director and the scriptwriter of the show who are Savitri Medhatul and Bhushan Korgaonkar respectively. The dancers Shakuntalabai Nagarkar and Akanksha Kadam who belong to the traditional community of Lavani dancers reveal their professional world to the audience.
Even before the onset of the performance, it is hard to miss the eye popping presence of the dancers in the room. Boldly dressed with special plum sized ghungroos tied around their ankles, they enter the stage to only own it. As they begin, their connection with the audience is immediate and direct. Looking at the audience straight in the eye, they command attention and demand a hoot or two. It is this relationship that the performers establish with the audience, which define the energy of the performance. While images of a man gazing at a woman as she performs being shy and coy is popularly accepted in performances, the confident gaze of a woman dancer, especially to the audience is often demoralized and even stigmatized. Reflecting on the present day social status of classical dance and Lavani, the narrators note how the presence of the divine in the classical dance recitals offer eroticism a social legitimacy. The instances describing the love between Radha and Krishna are not rare. A Lavani dancer asserts herself to not an imagined hero on stage but to the audience. She looks back at the people who at her and in the very act of looking back at the audience Akanksha Kadam and Shakuntalabai, subvert the male gaze, deny objectification, break through layers of cultural stigma and push the audience to question their own notions of gender normativity. The real challenge was for the audience because appreciating the performance required one to step out of one’s comfort zone.
The performance also reveals to the audience, the wide range of the Lavani repertoire of which the fast paced number with shoulder shimmy and backbends is only a small part. Shakuntalabai in one of the pieces inspired by the “baithak” style of Lavani, gives us a glimpse of a slow paced abhinaya called “Adaakari” in the traditional lingo. Seated on a wooden stool (for the convenience of the audience on the floor, otherwise it is usually performed sitting on the ground), she sang and accompanied her singing with facial expressions and gestures. The song described a a royal queen preparing to offer worship to the god, however the charm of the performance lies not in the deification but in the humanized portrayal of the queen.
While the performance truly celebrated the agency of the woman in wanting to be expressive sexually, it makes one wonder how much of a choice did the dancers really have? Is the story of every Lavani dancer that of choice and agency? Were there no exploitative structures within the tradition of Lavani that subjugated the women to oppression? Apart from these questions however, “Sangeet Bari” offers a socially situated perspective of Lavani and salvages the form from its stereotype of being just a titillating dance while still retaining its bold aspect of sensuality.
