Many faces of Feminine Divine

Ma3Ka stood out for Anita Ratnam’s storytelling through distinct movement vocabulary

February 07, 2019 04:01 pm | Updated 04:01 pm IST

Anita Ratnam reprised her complex, multi-dimensional “neo-Bharatam” and spoken word piece, ‘Ma3Ka,’ on Tuesday night (February 5) in the serene courtyard of Gratitude, a restored French-era building, as part of the 2019 Pondicherry Heritage Festival. This marks the third consecutive year she has performed at the festival.

Conceived and choreographed in 2009, ‘Ma3Ka’ is the performative expression of a resurgent feminist ideal, as embodied by Hindu goddesses Saraswati, Lakshmi, and Meenakshi — learned, fecund, fierce. The piece is one part devotion, one part resistance; and it succeeds on both counts in large part from a thoroughly autobiographical authenticity. The many faces of the feminine divine are refracted through the prism of Ratnam’s personal storytelling and, of course, the distinctive movement vocabulary she has developed over many decades of work.

‘Ma3Ka’ embraces and explicates the tensions, ambiguities, and contradictions of the feminine ideal, rather than running away from them. Ratnam’s grandmother, named after the goddess of wisdom, “was denied education after the age of eight;” and yet, in dance and words, we are made to understand the wealth of knowledge and universal competence she possessed. In her portrayal of Lakshmi, Ratnam playfully shows how celebration of prosperity and abundance become empty in a present-day material culture which values only affluence and acquisition. And her Meenakshi may be invincible; but she fights because she is embattled, challenged by norms of appearance and gendered expectations from the moment of her birth.

Exploring the ancient texts

Ratnam’s explorations represent a re-examining and re-imagining of sacred texts and traditional tropes to find contemporary meaning and relevance. “These are discussions I want to provoke,” she says. “This is the very function of art.” As always, her performance was radiant and assured, confidently adapting to the unorthodox performance space. Gratitude is one of Pondicherry’s most sensitively restored colonial buildings, now used as a guest house. The performance took place in the large central courtyard, with a raised terrace serving as the stage.

Ratnam made clever, playful use of the house. The prominent mango tree emerging from one side of the “stage” became Mount Kailash, the abode of Siva and the site of Meenakshi’s ultimate conquest. The doorways to what is ordinarily the building’s dining room, just behind the open terrace, extended the performance space in a way that created both interesting framing of significant vignettes, as well wonderful moments of concealment and emergence.

The courtyard itself was full to capacity. While the venue was significantly constrained for the staging of work as widely admired as Ratnam’s, it was a gesture of the importance of heritage restoration in Pondicherry. Likewise, her work represented an important contribution to the spirit of the festival. It exemplified the ways in which traditional culture creates an irreplaceable platform upon which new forms can be built, linking the past with the future in a way that both retains our sense of identity and allows it to evolve.

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