Students wishing to seriously pursue one of the complex classical dance or music genres of India are usually advised to focus single-mindedly on their practice and learning. This single-mindedness requires that one zones out — or at least distances — for the time being, other interests like light reading, movie watching, shopping or even a serious pursuit of current affairs. The newspaper can wait, one’s riyaaz cannot, goes the principle. This withdrawal from the everyday world is probably required because the path of a classical art tends to lead one deeper within the self, and to follow it undisturbed, one has to forego the other, more external paths. But this approach has a logical conclusion. Once one crosses the tricky threshold and creates an identity as a professional artist, the sadhana or inward journey of the preparatory years would have equipped one to balance the everyday realities with the demands of riyaaz . Thus, serious artists needn’t cocoon themselves from the externals — whether these pertain to small experiences like negotiating the bus queue, or world events like the winds of hatred and communalism that have set off violent conflagrations across the earth — but can use their art, according to their individual preferences, to confront the issues of their time. The spectrum of choice is theirs.
Nearly four decades ago, when well known Bharatanatyam exponent and teacher Justin McCarthy came to India from the US to concentrate on Bharatanatyam, he was quite the picture of the dedicated student in pursuit of the sadhana of art. Hours of physical practice, lessons in Carnatic music, a steadfast study of Sanskrit, Tamil and Hindi — to the point that today he can read and converse in all three — led him to an arangetram in New Delhi in 1984.
NEW DELHI, 03/10/2017: Justin McCarthy, American-born noted Indian Bharatnatyam dancer, instructor and choreographer who teaches Bharatnatyam at the Shriram Bharatiya Kala Kendra, in New Delhi. Photo: V. Sudershan
Since then, both in his solo work and his group choreography, McCarthy’s stamp can be discerned in the clean lines of nritta, adherence to the movement vocabulary of Bharatanatyam as it has developed in the 20th Century under Rukmini Devi’s influence, high quality Carnatic music and an unhurried unfolding of the performance. At the same time, his personal interests have always been in evidence, whether in his choice of theme or in stylistic statements that go against conventions — one remembers him once performing an entire varnam without ankle bells — or again, in works that combined music of the world with Bharatanatyam.
Recently, at the IIC Experience festival of the India International Centre, he presented choreographic compositions featuring, among others, one on the Yamuna that included a technical report on the state of the river, presented almost as a prayerful chant. “I love poetry that has the Yamuna in central focus in contrast to the living, or dying, river that creeps by right next to us,” explains McCarthy.
MASTERSTROKE Justin McCarthy’s performance on the state of Yamuna in progress
Certainly, the Yamuna we see depicted so aesthetically in Indian dance and painting, so eloquently described in classical poetry and mythology, is unrecognisable as the swamp that lies between New Delhi and the ‘Trans-Yamuna’ sections of the city. And so, says McCarthy, “Every morning it’s very difficult for me to say, ‘I’m a Bharatanatyam dancer.’…You can’t keep recreating an ideal world within this context. Khokla ban jaata hai (It turns hollow).”
This past week, McCarthy was honoured with the Nartaka award presented by the Natyanjali Trust in Chennai. Unusually self-effacing in a competitive world, this artist leaves one to discover these accomplishments through the cultural news avenues. That his feet are on the ground but his vision soars high is reflected in his remark that his acceptance speech was “an opportunity to make a pitch for kind and welcoming treatment of migrants the world over!”
Inspired by nature
This approach ties in with the topics he enumerates among the inspirations for his choreographic endeavours: “performing arts history (or histories),” he clarifies, “ranging from lives of dancing women to patronage, to the idealisation of the natural world as opposed to the actual state of the natural world around us.”
He has more than once “reimagined” the world of the devadasis and poets who enriched and sustained the artistic material that has come to be known as the Bharatanatyam repertoire today. In past years, he has presented a production imagining the life of the great padam composer Kshetragna (also known as Kshetrayya), as gleaned from his padams. Another production attempting to recreate — fictionally — the milieu in which the devadasis created art was “Rajavilasam”, which offered a picture of royal patronage and its relationship to the dance and dancers.
NEW DELHI, 03/10/2017: Justin McCarthy, American-born noted Indian Bharatnatyam dancer, instructor and choreographer who teaches Bharatnatyam at the Shriram Bharatiya Kala Kendra, in New Delhi. Photo: V. Sudershan
At the recent IIC festival, the theme of recreating the past was once more reflected, in both the title of the performance, “Where the Streets are Fragrant with Sandal Paste,” and in some of the pieces. The performance, for McCarthy, was illustrative of his “engagement with the history of dance and the place of dance in today’s world.”
The first composition, designed like an invocation, was also a “take on patronage.” In the opening section, the dancers offered their performance to a deity, while in the second, they performed in honour of royalty. The last section, he explained, was “on no patronage at all.” The canopy that earlier housed a decorated image of a god or a king was empty here, a telling image of our times where artists are (depending on how one perceives it) either allowed the freedom to create without strings attached, or left to fend for themselves.
In his second composition, the artist was once more trying to place Bharatanatyam in its historical context, but using imagination to fill in the blanks. “I’m not making any assertive statement, but I’ve tried to place javalis in a context,” he says, of the lively shringara-based compositions in which the nayika addresses the hero or nayak on an equal footing, even if that nayak is named a god, like Krishna, Subramania, Shiva, or other entity with a divine focus.
Setting the context
McCarthy sets the context of the javalis as situations where wealthy ‘upper class’ gentlemen visited their favourite dasis and were regaled with a high standard of dance and song, which simultaneously amused and flattered them when the dancer made the songs addressed to gods seem as light-hearted as if she were talking to the gentlemen themselves.
“That’s a hypothetical look at what sort of milieu gave birth to a form like the javali,” he says. This is sensitive territory for dance arts that have struggled with the social opprobrium associated with the courtesan tradition and changing mores. The choreographer states, “I’m trying not to look at it in a judgemental kind of way.”
On audience response, he remarks, “People seem to have been mystified by the piece,” adding, “I didn’t really explain it. It’s a total fantasy also. I’m not saying this is the way it was.”
NEW DELHI, 03/10/2017: Justin McCarthy, American-born noted Indian Bharatnatyam dancer, instructor and choreographer who teaches Bharatnatyam at the Shriram Bharatiya Kala Kendra, in New Delhi. Photo: V. Sudershan
While he terms it fantasy in terms of specifics, he mentions Devesh Soneji’s “Unfinished gestures: devadasis, memory, and modernity in South India” (University of Chicago Press, 2011) and accounts heard from people over the years, which have given his imagined situations strong foundational support.
On other inspirations for his choreographic prolificity, McCarthy lists “poetic texts from the vast literatures of Tamil, Telugu and Sanskrit,” and “music — predominantly from the Carnatic canon”.
Since the ’90s he has been teaching at New Delhi’s Shriram Bharatiya Kala Kendra where he has moulded quite a number of accomplished young dancers. On what he as a mentor aims to communicate to his students and what he hopes for from them, McCarthy says, “The steps and gestures are one level. One must strive to articulate as perfectly as possible according to an intended model (usually imposed by the teacher) at that level, but from the beginning one must be aware that that is only one of several simultaneous levels. The other levels of poetry, fluidity, empathy and hidden meanings need to be thought about as close to the beginning of learning as possible.”
Even as he maintains a low profile while keeping up to the high standards of dance and music he has set for himself, McCarthy is also associated with the Ashoka University’s performing arts programme.
Mind over matter
He is now preparing for another foray into linking art and life. He will be performing at an international conference on sex and education. “Sex/Ed”, organised by the Centre for Studies in Gender and Sexuality at Ashoka University, and Wellesley Centers for Women, takes place on November 18 and 19 at New Delhi’s Bikaner House.
“I’m planning to take two padams to talk of appropriate and inappropriate behaviour, and trust and breaking of trust,” McCarthy says, offering yet another hint that the breadth of his vision has come from a depth of engagement with his chosen form.
Channels of communication
Justin McCarthy is adept at Hindi, Tamil, Sanskrit and French, besides his mother tongue English. As for vocabularies, he also trained in Odissi alongside Bharatanatyam, but later gave it up. Besides, he is an exponent of European classical music and plays and teaches the piano.
His early dance and music training took place at the Berkeley School of Dance in the U.S. While still in the U.S., he began learning Bharatanatyam under Lesandre Ayrey and Mimi Janislauuski. He then came to India in 1979 and studied Bharatanatyam under Pandanallur Subbaraya Pillai for a year, before relocating to Delhi and continuing his training for ten years under Leela Samson.
On the role that the array of verbal languages at his disposal has played in shaping his art, he says, “Multiple languages naturally create multiple echoes, resonances and vantage points, giving us a fuller palette of linguistic and poetic colours to choose from.”
On the parallel art forms, he says, “The decision to stop Odissi was mine. I felt the styles (Bharatanatyam and Odissi) were too similar in many ways, thus almost impossible to keep distinct within one body. European classical music is substantially different from Bharatanatyam, so that danger wasn’t there.”
He adds, “En revanche, piano was helpful for Bharatanatyam, as both arts have certain underlying principles which can, under a certain light, be perceived as similar and sympathetic to each other.”
