In 2004, 44 years after its making, the film Mughal-e-Azam was re-released in colour, each frame painstakingly filled in to bring new life. One of the scenes that kept doing the rounds showed Madhubala as Anarkali dancing in Akbar’s court, surrounding her audience in more ways than one as they caught her reflection in the thousands of mirrors on the court’s walls. On the big screen, especially in early Indian cinema, dance has always been crucial to creating affect. It is this evocative era of Indian cinema that Kathak dancer Shoma Kaikini channels in her production RITI – Journey through the Black and White Era . The production will be presented by dancers from her school Nrityanidhi as part of their annual celebration on Sunday.
RITI has picked popular songs from the Hindi cinema of the 1950s and ’60s, interpreting them through Kathak and improvisational and mimetic dancing. The films of the ’50s and ’60s reflected the post-Independence mood of progress and change. Their stories take us from the village to the city with its elastic accommodation of dreams and desires and its insatiable appetite for ruin. Framed by these overarching narrative tendencies, the protagonists leave their mark on their surroundings, finding satisfaction and emotional resolution in small measure.
Incidentally, Kaikini was moved to create dance work by her own experience of Mumbai. “When I first came to Mumbai, I saw that people were so far removed from the arts. The city had a lot to do with business and even with education, but not with the arts. Hindi cinema ruled, and people found it much easier to do Bollywood or zumba instead of Kathak,” she said.
Instead of resisting these influences, Kaikini made a strategic choice. Like other dancers before her, she decided to work with what the city was made up of. It started with a song from the 1958 film Madhumati playing on the radio as Kaikini drove to work. Suddenly, she was full of movement ideas, and there was a feeling of having bitten off more than she could chew. This was the start of a long and satisfying creative process. The songs took her into the mannerisms of a bygone era. For instance, ‘ Chod do aanchal ’ had her thinking about the significance of the gesture of someone holding on to a pallu . Over time, cinema also reflected changing mannerisms and notions of propriety and decorum.
As Kaikini listened to songs with the intention of dancing to them, she realised how one song could have several emotional layers, subtle shifts and overlaps marking a change in tone. As she choreographed, she revisited iconic films, marvelling at how Rekha in Umrao Jaan and Madhubala in Mughal-e-Azam premised entire dance sequences on their capacity to emote intelligently.
“Every single detail has an emotion related to it and things change with that emotion. Today, people move, they really do, but that era found complexity in very simple things,” she shares. Kaikini is struck by this simplicity of the black and white era, the notion that less is more.
The author is a dancer and writer
RITIwill be performed at Ravindra Natya Mandir at 5 p.m. today. For tickets check with the venue.
