Eminent classical dancers from south India have questioned the new guidelines drawn up by the Union Culture Ministry for selection of dance productions for Festivals of India overseas, and warned that “senior artists with a track record will never submit to such a process.”
Some of them have registered their objections with the Ministry. In an email to the Culture Secretary, Bharatanatyam artist and president of the Association of Bharatanatyam Artists of India (ABHAI) Chitra Viswesaran said, “Senior artists will never appear for this nature of audition. The Government, as a result, will lose out on some of the best artistic/aesthetic dance presentations of Southern, Western and Eastern India.”
In another email, V.P. Dhananjayan — a product of Kalakshetra — said the responsibility of selecting artists cannot rest with one institution which may not be competent to evaluate art and artists from different States and traditions. Calling for the selection to be done by a board of eminent artists and heads of established institutions instead, he added that artists of high calibre will not apply for or appear for an audition under the new system.
On July 4, the Ministry issued a circular detailing the ‘Procedure for Selection of Dance Productions’ for Festivals of India abroad. Officials maintained that the procedure allowed wider involvement of artists as till now the Ministry’s participation in Festivals of India — revived in 2013 — was restricted to Kalakshetra Foundation and Sangeet Natak Akademi (SNA).
The new guidelines have created two categories. In the first, four institutions under the Ministry — Kalakshetra, Kathak Kendra, Sattariya Kendra (Guwahati) and Jawaharlal Nehru Dance Academy (Imphal) — can present in-house productions for selection.
In the second category, which opens the festivals to organisations outside the Ministry, a graded resources list of performing groups of ballets will be prepared by a specialist committee. Ballets from this list will then be selected for a festival in consultation with the Indian diplomatic mission in the host country.
Kalakshetra has been entrusted the task of making the list on a bi-annual basis — to be updated also bi-annually — for Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Maharashtra, Goa, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal and Gujarat. The list for the remaining States will be prepared by SNA.
Criticising this move — specifically with relation to the Kalakshetra Director grading dance productions — ABHAI said, “The task is an onerous one for it covers a large area, not just in terms of States, but in terms of the several classical/folk dance styles that are to be covered. The head of just one institution assisted by two members of the faculty will neither have the bandwidth of required expertise nor will be adequately equipped to the situation….ideally there should be two committees; one each for classical dance and folk dance.”
