“Sir, have you met Radha? How do you know her gait is like that of a swan?” asked a young Aruna Mohanty once to her guru, the late Kelucharan Mohapatra. He had just taught her a piece from the Gita Govinda, and likened Radha’s walk to that of the white, majestic yet coy bird.
“Of course, I haven’t met Radha. But I have met her in my mother, my sister and my wife,” he had replied.
“But that is your contemporary experience then and it need not even be related to the Radha of the epics, right?”
“Of course, but keeping the essence of her character intact, I’m narrating my contemporary experience to you in the language of the traditional, using its specific vocabulary.”
Inadvertently, this exchange between Mohanty and Mohapatra seems to have captured the essence of the debate surrounding traditional forms such as classical dance (and all other classical arts in fact): the tussle between the traditional and the contemporary. What is traditional? What is contemporary? And who gets to define them? These questions are important, say practitioners because we live in an age of polarities. “Today, there is one faction of artists that believes classical dance is redundant. Who is interested in this nayaka and nayika, they ask. But by way of replacement/counterpoint/continuity, what do we then have as modern or contemporary dance within the classical is the question. The problem is we are blindly trying to replace one paradigm with another,” says Ashish Khokar, dance historian and mentor.
It is also equally true, say artists, that there is resistance from certain quarters of the classical dance fraternity when artists attempt experiments or try to engage with contemporary issues. The logic, they say is that it interferes or adulterates the style. “Each person needs their space to do what they want to do. And if you are going to simply re-perform the repertoire you have learnt from your guru, then what is your contribution to the art?” asks Bharatanatyam guru, Minal Prabhu. “If Rukmini athai has choreographed a varnam, I’m not going to change the choreography of that. I don’t have the right to do that. But, if I take up a song that I have not been taught in Kalakshetra, then I can use my imagination to choreograph it . The idea is not to break the tradition but to learn the limitations of it and then imagine the unlimited,” she explains.
So, how then should classical dance chart its journey? Especially with traditional and the contemporary strands tugging at it, how should it move forward?
“We cannot escape tradition in India. Our elders have taught us some things and these are part of our collective memory. I think young India needs to be a bridge between the old and the new,” says Khokar. But for this, a strong foundation in the old is absolutely necessary, he argues.
Veteran Bharatanatyam exponent and founder of Kalakshiti School of Dance, M.R. Krishnamurthy agrees with Khokar. “It is alright to want to show the creeper. But for that, first we need to show the tree. Otherwise, the classical will only become a set of astounding jumps and movements with no content and no roots. Audience may enjoy it. But they will hardly remember it,” he says.
The attitude, sometimes, against Indian epics, which form the crux of the repertoire of classical dance, is that it is irrelevant to the present. But is it? This is a criticism that is unfounded, says Khokar. “We have just celebrated 400 years of Shakespeare. How do I connect to him while I’m sitting here in Bangalore, trained in my version of English? The epics in India are inescapable. The last line in Mahabharata says, that which is not stated in this epic does not exist in the universe. A certain Ved Vyas seemed to have known humanity’s mindscape thousands of years ago and that surely merits attention,” says Khokar.
If he cites Shakespeare, Krishnamurthy reminds us of Tyagaraja. “Why are classical singers still singing his compositions? Surely, we can move on and sing newer compositions. But, somehow, we seem to be returning to the old and why, is something that needs to be understood,” he explains.
There is a whole gamut of emotions within the epics says Aruna Mohanty and “it is enough to depict everything in our present,” she adds. Apart from its relevance and its time tested strengths, there is also an idealism, a certain romanticism to those stories, says Prabhu. “Stories about Krishna stealing butter, the Krishna-Radha love story etc. are eternal. You can show the same stories in different ways - and that is the charm of the form,” she says.
That said, can young students of dance relate to those characters? “They all relate to it. Also, what these stories embody are ideals of faith, hope and positivity which are values we really need in an age when there is so much negativity,” she adds. Khokar says that in an age of no role models, young India needs these epics.
In terms of new ideas and themes, practitioners say that despite resistance, they are slowly pushing the envelope and this is something that needs to be encouraged and sustained.“Art is above you, me and any boundaries. We are already in an age when things that were taboo are out on the stage. The sensual, for instance in Bharatanatyam, was something that was considered inappropriate earlier. But now we do have pieces like Kuru Yadunandana from Gita Govinda being performed and being well-received,” says Prabhu. “It is already happening with a few dancers taking the lead but we should engage with newer themes. Ultimately,the audience is the only judge that matters and we need to keep them interested too,” says Khokar.
And yet, small innovations apart, forging this golden bridge between the old and new is also not that simple, say artists and this is because of the times we live in. With an overdose of information bombarding us from all quarters, taking the next step forward has become that much more challenging. The problem with modern Indian dance, explains Khokar, is about understanding what part is modern and what part is Indian. He argues that using the West as a model, for example, isn’t working for us. “Our art forms are about the spirit and soul and that is why they were rooted in divinity. Western forms are rooted in body and that is a temporal form of art. Classical dance is at crossroads today.” Prabhu adds that this is not peculiar to the present though. “Classical dance has always been in the realm of flux and ambiguity and the process of churning is integral to its journey forward,” she says.
Perhaps, striking the golden mean between the traditional and the contemporary is an on-going exercise, an eternal debate about what works and what does not – every age has to find its own mythical Radha.
"The epics contain a whole gamut of emotions and they suffice to depict everything in our present" - Aruna Mohanty
"The problem with modern Indian dance is about understanding what part is modern and what part is Indian" -Ashish Khokar
"The idea is not to break the tradition but to learn the limitations of it and then imagine the unlimited" - Minal Prabhu
"Why are classical singers still singing compositions of Tyagaraja. Surely, there is an appeal that compels artists to return to him" - M.R.Krishnamurthy
