“I used to be hypersensitive, I used to withdraw into a shell…” Alarmel Valli pauses. To catch a dancer in a mood of introspection, away from the limelight, when the make-up is off and the audience is not around to watch, is frequently to discover a person with little similarity to the stage image one is used to. The case of Valli is no different. If the renowned Bharatanatyam dancer on stage is a picture of joy, full of bounce and unbounded energy, in ordinary life she not only has her feet on the ground, but is also prone to contemplating the gap between the exalted experience of dance and the mundane depths to which life can frequently sink. It was precisely this reality of life, of seeing that the most beautiful of dancers were frequently not beautiful human beings that upset her in her youth.
In the under-funded world of Indian classical dance, over-populated with performers and strangely under-supplied with audiences, not every dancer makes it to national and international fame. Valli has received Government accolades like the Padma Bhushan, prestigious international honours like the French Government's Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, and had a number of films made on her.
Contrasts
Yet through a career of over four decades, she has retained not only her youthful looks but an endearingly youthful innocence too. It comes out in her polite, public school English, her touching references to “Amma”, her mother who has always guided her practice and is her “most severe” critic, and to her “poor dear hubby”, former Doordarshan Director General Bhaskar Ghose, who she says is a serene foil to her excitable nature.
But what most of all makes one realise that Valli has not let go of her innocence is her continuing diligence. In an environment that has its share of cynicism and a willingness to let externals like costumes, a beautiful face and high voltage percussions dazzle audiences, Valli insists on doing her homework. Whether preparing a new dance production or answering a journalist's questions, she thinks before she acts, puts her ideas in writing. And in doing so, she takes responsibility for her actions.
“It's very difficult to stay true to your convictions,” she admits. When people around you are willing to adopt “any means to an end”, to continue to work is not easy, she notes. “I used to get dejected at the state of the world.” But 15 years ago she found a spiritual anchor in Vedanta classes. It was “like bliss suddenly appearing.” She is convinced that there is no “winning post” since “that is not what dance is all about.”
Dance may be about a search for the sublime, but there are goals all the same, and hurdles too. One was in her physique. The very slimness that is the envy of many a dancer today was seen as “painfully thin” in her youth, recalls Valli. It got so many people asking her mother why she was putting her “frail” daughter through the tough discipline of Bharatanatyam. The clucking tongues stopped, thanks to her “Doctor Mama” — Dr. Subramaniam — who was “a bit of a patriarch” of Valli's family and explained to everyone that if not for dance, the child would have been unhealthy. “Bookworm” that she was, he pointed out that her regular dance practice helped her avoid weak eyesight.
Dr. Subramaniam and his wife Lalitha played another significant role in Valli’s career. Their daughter began to learn Bharatanatyam under Pandanallur Chokkalingam Pillai. “Otherwise I may not have been allowed to dance,” says Valli, who also learnt under his son Subbaraya Pillai.
Competing within
Valli adds, “Though no one thought of dance as a career, yet the discipline I had was that of a professional dancer.” And though competitiveness is not part of her nature, her “typical Virgo perfectionist” personality drives Valli. “There is this constant competing against yourself.” Sometimes the same piece of choreography presents new vistas to her.
Music has always been a twin artistic pillar, and her vocal training under T. Mukta has given her a rare insight into abhinaya . What is important, feels Valli, is to have “bhakti” and remember “that transcendental beauty that our classical arts have” and that “you are nothing before it, just a speck.” When a dancer manages that, “something greater than you occupies your body; it habits you.”
Valli recalls dancing with a temperature of 103 degrees on one occasion. Till she began moving, she did not know what would happen, but then, she was “possessed”. The performance gave no inkling of severe bronchial attack that was held at bay for those two hours and then took over her body for 10 days. Similarly, with a face swollen due to a reaction to a yellow fever vaccination, she was not allowed by organisers to cancel the performance. Having used grated potatoes and cucumbers to reduce the swelling, when she finally danced, a critic said “there was no trace of illness.” This can only be credited to the power of the art, she feels. “It does something for you.”
