Swarnamalya Ganesh is a unique artiste. One says this not only because of her extraordinary creativity but because as an artiste and a scholar, her interpretation of history is something that stands out every time she puts on a costume and takes the stage. Her Sadir performances have often been open windows to history and an era bygone. But, perhaps, that is what she destabilises too, that Sadir does not have to be the dance of the bygone era, but an art form that is very much a part of our present cultures and traditions.
This destabilising, she does by re-imagining the past, creating those very spaces where specific kinds of dancing and singing existed, reinterpreting the texts so that one best understands the past in tandem with the present. This week, Swarnamalya brings to Delhi a very special production that goes by the name, “Where Stories Take Form”, based on the stories of music and dance in the British Raj of 18th and 19th centuries of the Madras Presidency.
“The idea comes from another production of mine called “Dancing in the Parlour” which seeks to look at the kind of repertoire that was performed in intimate spaces like salon performances. The Madras Presidency had patrons knows as the dubashis . They were men who were dwi-bhasha , spoke two languages and were interpreters to the British company. They were extremely influential, who were the go between the British and the locals. Knowing the language was their capital and they became extremely wealthy thanks to the liaising they did for the British. One of the things they did was entertain. Madras had 600 odd private gardens, with fountains, lakes, deer parks, etc., owned by the dubashis . They had small gatherings of people called the sadas , a name which has stuck on. The sadas represents their patronage to new-age poets. Anybody could go, and present their art. It was not elitist at all, even though these spaces were owned by elite people. On any given evening, there would be a music soiree or a dance performance. There were also small manuals which introduced the art form to the British officers. These became important 18-19th Century texts for self-learning of Bharatanatyam and are in the archives now. The new age non-hereditary artiste found great help from these texts,” says Swarnamalya.
The base for her production is a Sanskrit text called “Sarvadeva Vilasam”, which was written in Madras in the late 18th Century. The author is unknown. The work goes into immense details about the life of the dubashis in Madras, the patrons, etc. It is also talks about who patronised people like Saint Tyagaraja and his father, Muthuswami Dikshitar and his brother, to name a few.
“This is the time when dance and music started to move out of the temple spaces, villages and came to this cosmopolitan city. It could not have jumped from the temple to the proscenium, so the in-between lies here and started to reform as what we see as Bharatanatyam now. The javallis , padams , the nottuswarams , even the ones by Kshetrayya were re-staged here afresh,” says Swarnamalya.
Because the temples were starting to get heavily taxed and could not afford to patronise the dancers anymore, the dancers started to move out for sustenance. These were non-prosceniums but ones that were not temples. The repertoire comes with specific stories of performing particular things at particular times. Says Swarnamalya, “You can call these women the non-dedicated devadasis. When these new dancing spaces met the non-duty-bound dancers, a new repertoire was created. The congregation in many of these gardens were also named sabha , hence the name sabha . The sadas was presided by a chief patron, much like an open-mic today.”
Carnatic nawabi culture
What is fascinating here is the Carnatic nawabi culture, which was replete with Persian and Urdu poetry, Kathak, and Hindustani classical music. “One would not usually think that Madras would have this kind of a culture, but here we are! The Carnatic nawabs were immensely popular but do not get talked about much. These nawabs also extended patronage to the South Indian tawaifs , who were called kanchanis . The dance was perhaps a very South Indianised version of Kathak,” she adds.
To make things real, Swarnamalya and her team call themselves the Madras Sadir Company that will perform at Nawab Sadullah Khan II’s court, where she will render a thumri written by the Urdu poet Maulana Baqhir Agha Vellori of Vellore. Another piece is a rare Kshetrayya composition, one that is not based on Muvvagopala. It is about Adivaraha, the presiding deity of Mannargudi. The composition is about a monetary transaction between the heroine and the hero.
“The era reflected the multilingual nature of Madras presidency; there was Tamil, Telugu, Sanskrit, Urdu and Persian. The kanchanis brought so much Kathak to Sadir, and there were these Hindustani musicians who jammed often. What came out of those sessions was captivating. There was an array of Persian and Urdu poets who sang ghazals and khayals written here in Madras, performing in these intimate spaces. And I feel like we tend to miss these stories that occurred in music and dance. I am only trying to highlight those,” she sums up.
(“Where Stories Take Form” will be presented by designer Sandhya Raman’s Desmania foundation, at the Atelier in Lado Sarai on April 14 at 7:30pm.)
