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Dancers share experiences
``IN THE past the projector did not work, now the video gives trouble,'' said an NRI visitor who attended the Natyakala Conference, Sri Krishna Gana Sabha, after a long break. Not quite true, as over the years, this weeklong morning session has evolved into an important meeting ground for dancers in India and the Indian diaspora. Though attendance varies, each season sees its committed regulars, including dance gurus and scholars whose presence authenticates the proceedings. Many Chennai based dance stars are noticeably absent though... due to the rehearsal rush...?
This year the conference had fewer participants from far off places. But it did have things going for it - starting with a clear focus for exposition and discussion by practitioners of traditional and contemporary dance. Since the subject was choreography, both soloists and group performers had plenty to share from personal experience. Younger artistes had as much representation as the elders, coming up with interesting, intriguing, and certainly audacious points of view. Anita Ratnam made an excellent convenor, drawing out the young and diffident voices from the back rows to participate. More, she saw to it that question time was not taken up with long, rambling, irrelevant commentaries as is often the case on such occasions.#
The conference had its share of spice, starting on Day One, when dance guru Dhananjayan averred that the word choreography came in only with Uday Shankar and Rukmini Devi; what the nattuvanars had done was called ``composing the dance". This point was picked up for some rancorous remarks on the last day. Priyadarshini Govind's demonstration on ``Bhava in Choreography'' raised the question of whether a solo performer can call her work "choreography'' at all.
The origin of the word from the chorus in ancient Greek theatre, referring to the group of people who commented on what was happening to the characters, was cited to sustain this interpretation. Fortunately Priyadarshini had support from her guru Kalanidhi Narayanan in warding off the slew of confused and misdirected arrows. (Actually, none seemed to have any precise idea of the subject or the word or even their questions). Priyadarshini had nothing new to say in words, but her demonstration itself established how much reflection, cogitation, organisation and orchestration had gone into every number she performed as examples. You could see that whatever its misty source or present day connotations in western parlance, the word choreography could be extended to yield new meanings to explain her process in arriving at the goal of evoking the emotion (rasotpatti is what the pundit would say). As a physical counterpoint to the crucial role of the sthayibhava (main sentiment) she underlined the use of the eyes ``as the windows of the soul". That passed muster. But her mild reference to the opposing views on abhinaya gave rise to visible sparks almost. Yet it was nothing but ``one school insisted that excessive precision in gesture led to attrition of emotion while another believed that lack of exactitude in gestures went against the spirit of dance."
The storm broke over Navtej Johar who spoke of personal memory and autobiographical experience as the sources of his present day inspirations in contemporary dance. What got the senior gurus to stage a walkout was his assertion that everything he did came from Bharatanatyam - in life (``lie down and scream" was the of-the-cuff example), and in art (it could be``Rama Rama prana sakhi'' or a duo tango with avante garde music and movements for the launch of a watch).
In the melee a very valid point he raised missed being taken seriously and discussed from multiperspectives available at the conference. ``The focus on technique, the more physical aspect of Bharatanatyam, has paradoxically led to the erosion of physicality in Bharatanatyam.'' Confessing to a greater personal reliance on improvisation over craft, he also recognised the danger of privileging impulse. Because you had to breach that huge chasm between seeing an inner world as an artiste, and revealing that inner world in performance. He knew that an artiste could be completely fulfilled in delving into deep tradition, but for himself it was important to allow himself to go into areas that he would not be permitted to enter in traditional practice.
It was left to Kumudini Lakhia to set ``Choreography in the Indian Context'' in her keynote address with the confidence of having been one of India's most consistently original choreographers in Kathak. Not the result of some flash in the pan or sporadic tinkering, but disciplined, passionate labours to connect - not isolate - herself to the living world. She too had started off with a dissatisfaction for what tradition offered, but instead of spurning the given, by slow degrees she extended it to her own purpose, relevant to the needs of her time and generation. She began to search for the pulse of the Kathak genre, break the old mould to re-form, re-create, re-invent patterns in space, time, action.
The following sessions at the Natyakala conference saw how different choreographers from several schools, genres and generations tried, as Kumudini Lakhia put it, to ``go beyond mere dance design, pour his or her life into the work to make it come alive.'' To be continued next week.
GOWRI RAMNARAYAN
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