It would not be hyperbolic to state that Shobha Deepak Singh’s ballets are crowd-pullers. “Krishna”, her popular dance ballet, which opened to its 41st edition recently continues to draw its annual ardent audience and a host of foreigners. The theatrical which will be on till Janmashtami was created 40 years ago, refined as the years rolled by, continues to draw a large number of audience, among all her ballets.
Shobha takes the compliments coming her way with a contented smile while being completely at ease, waiting at the auditorium for the show to begin. With the changing milieu, did it never occur to Shobha to present contemporary issues? “This contemporary bandwagon is a Western concept; for the West, there is no mythology, no past to fall back upon therefore they consider it a dead sequence. Therein lies the difference in thought. To me the past is the bedrock of the future on which the present lies. Our mythology is an everlasting well (wealth) from which you keep drawing the life force of water and it never gets depleted.” Pausing for a while, she adds, “In the past few years I have been fascinated by the endless possibilities of new interpretations. There is always a point of reference in each of these ballets. I have visited all mythological characters but my plays portray the ‘unique’ in the protagonist.”
Explaining at length her point, Shobha draws attention to the plot of the ongoing ballet in which the Mahabharat and Kurukshetra war violence is deeply embedded while the solutions to the carnage too are offered on the same battlefield. “The message of victory and redemption is more pertinent today than ever before.”
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Talking about the main protagonist of the dance ballet, “Krishna”, she comments, “I like to dwell on Krishna, the key persona, a fascinating presence later overlaid with legends, myths, miracles and adoration. Wise and valorous, he was loving and loved, far-sighted and yet living for the moment, gifted with sage-like detachment and the man of action with personality as luminous as the Divine. Years of research has endowed me with a clear distinction between the sort of folk hero, a surprisingly awesome, gallant, frivolous, miraculous young boy who rose to meet the crises of a pastoral community, who elevated love to divine levels and who was therefore looked upon as a superhuman leader in his life-time. In the Mahabharat, we encounter a totally different Krishna with administrative acumen, wise to the core, a Jagat-guru as he propounds the Karma Yoga to Arjuna in the ‘Bhagavad Gita’ and once again exhibits his super human form. Vyasa’s plot is the prime metaphor of the epic.”
This distinction comes clearly in the dance ballet where the distinction between the young, romantic hero played by the lithe Mayurbhanj Chhau dancer Shiburam Mohanta and the intellectually savvy Krishna (Rajkumar Sharma), saviour of Pandavas, was so marked both in terms of action and expression.
The storyline of the first half gives prominence to Radha (Geeta) and gopis. The romance and union of Radha-Krishna was endearing, subtle and the final adieu so emotional that the audience gets carried away with the personal charisma of the hero. The second half seemed as if Krishna’s life revolved round sorting out the problems of Pandavas rather than anything else. And of course the deliverance of Gita to Arjuna! It was the depiction of Kurukshetra war that was the highlight of the latter half of the production. The director presents a war of such a magnitude in the most subtle manner without losing out on the aesthetics, facts and its effect on the audience.
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The dances are a mix of Kathak and Mayurbhanj Chhau that definitely suit mythological ballets as no other form does. “Credibility is a big factor in my ballets. In Chhau, the body language literally speaks, emotes and conveys everything, unlike other classical forms where we got to resort to mudras,” she explains. As for the songs, some of them are in Braj, the language of such period plays.
Watching Shobha’s ballets, one cannot but compliment her on the visual master-strokes like having certain characters — Radha, Meera, Sudama — walk from within the audience, the very minimal prop that lend an air of quaint authenticity to the ambience of the times among other things.
Speaking about her journey, she says, “It has already traversed 47 years and that’s not a short time! I was fortunate to learn dance, music (sarod) and theatre under the most prominent gurus in respective fields. And today, I put all that I learnt into my productions.” What about her performances during her younger days? “I did not perform on stage, at least not solo,” and then as an after-thought she quips, “Oh yes! I played one of the monkeys in group production.” You can’t help appreciating her sense of humour. Choosing to continue, she states, “More than wanting to perform or produce, I’ve been very keen and successful in documenting classical dance ballets and art when such a process was not even underway in India then. My photographs and videos (now very obsolete) are researched archives of art and now they are so handy. I always nurtured a zeal to preserve our heritage. Classical arts are our legacy; they cannot be frittered away.”