Nearly 99 per cent of first generation gurus and dancers were male. The Pillais and the Gopals, the Shankars and the Shambhus. It was also a time and clime when female dancers — except those born to the manner — were not encouraged in and by social norms of the 1920s and 30s to dance in public.
Today, the reverse has happened and few male solo dancers thrive or can be seen on stage or festivals. Husband-wife pairs are many all over the country and also male dancers in group or ensemble works. This is not the concern or context. The focus is the stand-alone male dancer in each classical form, who are marginalised and dwindling.
Parallel development
In a parallel development, girls have increasingly taken to the all-male forms such as Kathakali, Yakshagana and Kuchipudi, which are mellam (dance-dramas or group) traditions, or even celibate monks’ Sattriya.
In the past 30-40 years, more and more women have taken to dancing as a career and have made professional inroads. With the result, there are more women among teachers than ever before.
“We feel comfortable as parents, our girl child is safe in today’s clime and can bond closely with guru, even stay and tour with them, if needed,” say the Radhakrishnans, whose two daughters Bianca and Natasha are with Radha Shridhar, Bangalore’s popular Bharatanatyam teacher.
Male solo dancers face many odds. First on the list, sponsors. “They often want pretty girls on stage,” avers Tushar Bhatt, who, when single, got shows in group works, rarely as a soloist but now married to fellow kathakaar Pooja, gets many more shows as a pair. “Solo male dancer is an endangered species, more than the white tiger!” jokes this dancer originally from near Gir forest, Gujarat.
How many solo male dancers are there in Bharatanatyam, Kathak or Kuchipudi, why even in modern dance? Do the national bodies such as the Sangeet Natak Akademi have any schemes or scholarships for the same to encourage or reverse this trend?
If society does not support such artistes, who will? The case of Odisha and Odissi is uniquely different. Many boys learn and dance, partly owing to the Gotipua tradition (pre- pubescent boys dressed-up as girls, dancing) and Odissi has more solo male dancers than even Bharatanatyam today.
The coin has another side too. “Where there is a will, there is a way,” says 22-year old Sujoy Shanbhag, a young Bharatanatyam dancer of Mysore. He takes an overnight bus to Hubbali just to teach dance to disadvantaged boys there. “Few are willing to go teach classical dance in the rural areas,” he says. He has already performed in many festivals including Purush discourses.
The Purush Ensemble (five forms by five male soloists) was put together seven years ago to help reverse this situation and since then over 50 shows from Houston to Thiruvananthapuram have been performed, to raise an awareness on this aspect of Indian dance.
The attenDance Ram Gopal Best Male Soloist Award instituted seven years ago also supports this cause. The award helps practically by providing performing avenues nationally and internationally.
Also there are some talented dancers, who are working hard to make a mark — Bengaluru’s Laxminarayan Jena and Lucknow’s Anuj Mishra in Kathak; Mumbai’s Pavitra Bhatt and Bengaluru's Nidhag Karunad in Bharatanatyam; Puducherry's Aneesh Raghavan and Bhubaneswar’s Rahul Acharya in Odissi. Bengaluru’s N. Gururaj, Vizag’s Mrutyanjayam in Kuchipudi; Patna’s Atul Kumar in Modern; Trichur’s K. Suresh in Ottanthullal and Imphal’s Sinam Basu in Manipuri.
The writer, a critic and historian, is the author of several books and edits attenDance
