The ongoing festival of Mohiniattam, Mohini Nrithyathi, seems like just the thing for the Kerala Sangeetha Nataka Akademi — the apex Government-funded cultural body of the State — to be doing to propagate this classical dance art from Kerala. The month-long festival stages performances by Mohiniattam dancers at various venues. The event this year included the states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Nagaland, Assam and West Bengal, besides Kerala, and concludes on December 30.
But not everyone agrees. Delhi-based Mohiniattam dancer Jayaprabha Menon, feeling the process of selection of dancers “lacked transparency”, filed a Right to Information application. “I asked what were the selection criteria, who were the expert committee members and I asked for the minutes of the meeting,” she says.
Jayaprabha says she received the reply that a meeting was held in August 2013, and the final decision was taken by the Executive Committee members of the Kerala SNA. “But the December 2012 issue of the Kerala SNA journal, ‘Keli’, carried all the names of the artists selected for this festival. This means the Akademi gave incorrect information (in response) to the RTI application.”
Jayaprabha says she also received “a few names of dancers from whom suggestions were accepted”. So she filed another RTI application asking to know their comments. “I asked for a signed copy of the minutes of the meeting.” This time she received the reply that there was no written record of their comments. “All this shows that it is an autocratic way of handling things,” says the dancer.
Also, she says, “the festival committee has dancers who themselves are performing in the festival — Methil Devika, Neena Prasad, Gopika Varma, Pallavi Krishnan and Vineetha Nedungadi.” All five are award recipients of the Kerala SNA, she notes, but adds, “all the senior gurus have been overlooked”. She names eminent artists like Kalamandalam Leelamma, Bharati Shivaji, Kanak Rele — “They have not even been consulted. You should take the expertise of these gurus who are Central and State Awardees and Fellows of the Akademis.” Besides, she alleges, “Not even one single student of Kerala Kalamandalam has been considered. In all these years has Kalamandalam not produced even one worthy Mohinattam dancer?”
As for worthy dancers, she continues, “I was told it is a festival of awardees and disciples of awardees.” She feels that some of the dancers selected did not qualify.
Jayaprabha, trained under Kalamandalam Saraswathy and Bharati Shivaji and mentored by Kavalayam Narayana Panikkar, is of the opinion that Mohinattam is an art that struggles for survival vis-à-vis other classical dance forms, and therefore when the Kerala SNA organises a festival on such a large scale, the attempt should be to include as many exponents as possible. “In a 30-day festival, 60 dancers could have been included, with double-billed evenings,” says the founder of the International Academy of Mohiniattam in Delhi.
Even while she concedes, “It’s an honour to perform for the Akademi,” the limited payment notwithstanding, Jayaprabha, who performed in the Mohini Nrithyathi festival last year, says she is “against the style” of organising the festivals. She also disagrees with the Kerala SNA’s discouragement of live musical accompaniment to dance.
“The shastras tell us that geetam, vadyam and nrityam (singing, instrumental music and dance) together make up the art of sangeetam,” she says. However, she asks, what kind of signal is sent if “a body like the Sangeetha Nataka Akademi which should promote and nourish artists — if they are going to push out the accompanying artists and ask dancers to perform to recorded music,” as they have done in the Mohini Nrithyathi festival? “If you don’t respect your own artists, how would the other States respect them?”
She cites another instance of dubious respect being paid to Mohiniattam: “Last year in Thiruvananthapuram, the festival was conducted on a temporary stage in the backyard of the Chairman’s (Soorya Krishnamoorthy) house.” Incidentally, the Thiruvananthapuram leg of the festival was organised in collaboration with Soorya Stage and Film Society, the cultural organisation founded by Krishnamoorthy.
