Aesthetic creativity in art that goes by the name ‘manodharma’ (that which rises out of your consciousness subject to certain principles) or ‘improvisation’ is an endangered facet of dance these days. Google search draws a blank on dance manodharma, only throwing up related aspect in music. And that is so, as Dr Pappu Venugopala Rao, scholar and litterateur states, “The term manodharmam is of fairly recent origin in the lexicon of Carnatic music. In short, it is creativity. The Lakshana grantha use the word ‘Prathibha’ which is a must for an artiste; but then for a dancer there is not much of manodharmam since it has to exist within the parameters of choreography.”
It is exactly at this point that Aniruddha Knight, a third generation dancer of the famed Balasaraswati lineage differs. He doesn’t wish to contend with the scholars but he says, “My years of exposure to the family tradition along with my Western thought and articulation has convinced me that a performing art ceases to evoke any emotion ( rasa uthpathi ) if it gives up on individual artiste’s impromptu creativity and ends up miming a rehearsed emotive output.” Sounds incomprehensible? That is because most of the youngsters today are ‘trained, tutored’ dancers who would love to ‘reproduce, replay’ even the emotive element with perfection and walk away with accolades rather than think and create on the spot, which is quite challenging.
“There is no learning manodharma in the strictest sense of the term. But there is a lot of grasping of what a particular line of the lyric conveys and how best it could be interpreted through the means of gestural dance,” says Aniruddha who is a standing example of ‘practice what you preach’. The doyen of dance, B. Chandrasekhar had once succulently put it, ‘Indian dance imbibes a highly stylised, codified language of gestures where the language of the lyric is interpreted through dance in three categories, viz. Kavyartha (meaning of the composition as a whole) followed by Vakhyartha (interpreting each line of the song) and Padhartha (word by word meaning in the lyric). The dominant mood (sthayi bhava) is first projected to the audience; then the complimentary and transitory moods are presented through Vakhyartha and Padhartha.’ The Padhartha gives ample scope for sanchari bhava (emotive expression while moving to rhythm and song) where word to word interpretation with relevance to the situation is presented by the dancer through as many gestural meanings as possible, showcasing the artiste’s skill at emotive output to the hilt. These stylised, conventional gestures in dance have a universal appeal across linguistic and geographical barriers. Hence, it is classical dance! “It should be clear from the beginning that manodharma is an active process wherein the artiste is able to create an illusory world through sheer expression and emotion in a structured manner. Creativity doesn’t mean the dancer takes to her own innovation beyond the realm of reason and Sastra; that would make it entirely loka dharma ; it should actually be a fine balance of natya dharma and improvisation. My grandmother would always insist that the technique of dance as mentioned in the treatises is the backbone of manodharma. Once on the stage, the artiste has to be self-centred, equipped with multi-conscious approach to the audience, the accompanists, the technique, the composition and all the extraneous aspects while the thinking process in on, in recreating an emotion in myriad ways. This is not learnt, it is absorbed. But how? Only by watching the guru do it; other stalwarts do it in their own expressive manner. Again, imitating them is not manodharma. The creative process within your mind gets churned as you keep watching the doyens who walked the dance floor before you, generations ago and one day, you would be able to do it yourself with your own stamp to it.”
According to him, the day classical dance got institutionalised, the death knell for manodharma got tolled too! “The minute you choreograph something, it means there is no scope for improvisation and that is the end to creativity,” he throws up his hands. Individualised teaching and learning, in music or dance had its own rewards. Music and rhythm has to be second nature to the dancer to be able to present his/her manodharma.It needs a collective mindset to be able to achieve that.
