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| Vol. 2, Issue 09 September 2010 |
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Arts & Reviews |
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Feature |
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End of Days
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| Choices for art: as artefact, evolving entity, or in aspic |
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By DAVE BESSELING
Published : 1 March 2010 |
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© DAVE BESSELING FOR THE CARAVAN |
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IKE SO MANY URBAN SANCTUARIES in India, if you didn’t know it was there, you’d walk right by it. I almost did, but a small signboard caught my eye. The Kalakshiti dance studio is set inside a gated compound, a Raj-era bungalow deflecting the dead-duck bawls and two-stroke chortles of passing rickshaws. The house is a series of quadrangular rooms that, |
with each set of clasp-shut doors, walls adorned by Mysore-style paintings and local knick-knacks, further filter the din of Bengaluru’s Basavangudi district. In the surprisingly silent enclave behind the house, the only sounds are the slaps of bare feet on a marble floor, and the echoes of deep, expelled breaths, as two Bharatanatyam pupils rehearse a complex sequence of movements dating back centuries.
A portrait of Rukmini Devi Arundale, the woman who popularised the ancient temple dance and brought it to the public in early 20th century Madras, hangs on one of the posts supporting the roof of the outdoor atelier. These dancers are not devadasi, but urbanites in what many call India’s most cosmopolitan city. But their watchful guru, MR Krishnamurthy, who trained directly under Devi Arundale for 17 years, is adamant that Bharatanatyam must retain its roots as a religious sacrament.
“This art is a divine way, a spiritual thing,” he says, sitting at the edge of the practice floor under a metre-high stele, where the benevolent, half-lidded eyes of his namesake deity hold vigil over the space. Dressed in a long kurta and wrapped in a shawl, the septuagenarian’s forehead is swept with the white stripes of a Hindu devotee fresh from puja, a calligraph red dash over the pineal eye. “In the dance,” he says, “[mankind] will be uplifted.”
The two female dancers, dressed in traditional costume — pleated sarees over pyjamas —finish the routine, and before leaving, collect their purses, check their mobile phones, and drape their spring jackets over their shoulders.
“Before, there were dancers that could concentrate 24 hours a day,” the guru says. “But now you have families, money… If they want to [study deeply], they must sacrifice everything in their life.”
He says not many do, and with Bengaluru becoming more westernised with each outsourced gigabyte—the West being the main culprit in the expropriation of traditional Indian arts, according to him—the dedication of the original temple dancer has all but disappeared; his beloved pursuit is losing its purity.
He disapproves of the way India’s national dance—dubbed so thanks to the efforts of Devi Arundale—is being ‘modernised,’ and clucks at those who would amalgamate what he believes sacred with other, more contemporary styles he clearly considers profane. For many contemporary dancers though, turning to more commercial pursuits has been the only way to survive. Yet “you cannot mix and match,” he insists. “Pure art cannot be compromised.”
| © DAVE BESSELING FOR THE CARAVAN |
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The woman who kept Bharatanatyam alive, Rukmini Devi Arundale. |
Ironic then, that his own guru, the woman who would eventually turn down the post of President of India in favour of running her dance academy in Madras, “brought the art to the public so everyone could dance. In that culture there was a stigma,” explains Krishnamurthy. “The Brahmins would not allow people to see the dance. She reformed it.”
And she did so by adapting the art to her times, something her disciple is reluctant to do today. Outside the Kalakshetra theatre in Chennai, there is a statue of Devi Arundale kneeling, greeting those who enter with open palms of welcome. Looking at the monument on a visit to the city, I think of how she brought the dance, not even so much out of the temples, but out of disrepute. As a result of shifting social priorities and artistic patronage, the devadasi suddenly found themselves without temple funding during the onset of British rule. They were forced to find alternative sources of income, largely understood to have resulted in prostitution. It was Arundale who removed the perceived prurient elements (certain hip, neck, lip and chest movements) from the dance, but was still met with outright opprobrium at her first public recital. She also introduced musical instruments like the violin, along with set and lighting design to Bharatanatyam performances. I look up at the statue’s closed eyes. It’s as if the will it must have taken to defy Tamil society at large on behalf of her art, and being a woman at that (even more so being a woman married to a British Theosoph), was something to be conserved. Rebellions require energy.
Around the rock that forms the base of the tribute, the greenery is reminiscent of lotus leaves, and Krishnamurthy seems to embody the lotus flower’s philosophical locus—taking root in the mud in order to blossom. But the lotus pond is only one part of an ecosystem.
Krishnamurthy admits none of his students’ roots will ever reach as deeply as his, and his successor will inevitably be a “part-timer.” Yet he insists someone twice or even thrice removed from his direct teaching, with a good understanding of the basics, could tap the perennial rhizome and “come up” like a lotus from the mud and attain the highest level of the art.
But today’s youth are not as well-versed in Hindu mythology as they once were, and Krishnamurthy laments that without a solid base in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the dance’s fundamental communicative intentions are wasted on today’s gilded youth.
| © DAVE BESSELING FOR THE CARAVAN |
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Under the watchful eyes of the master, performing Bharatanatyam in Bengaluru. |
But one musn’t let the shift and flux of the present lead to cultural regressionism just because the past is easier to define. People still visit Europe’s great museums and wonder “Where is the 21st century Mona Lisa?” But contemporary standards of art cannot be nailed to the door of a culture that lived however many hundreds of years ago anymore than the present state of affairs can be held accountable to the mind of a traditionalist who refuses to go with the flow.
Controversies surrounding the sacrosanct subject matter in certain paintings by MF Husain, for example, unveil an uneasy transition in Indian art, from the support systems of religions and royalty, into a secular, free-market economy where expression serves no agenda-wielding patron and any subject is fair game to be creatively dissected. Paradigm shifts can be painful.
Arts and culture, as living entities, evolve with us, because of us, and sometimes, in spite of us. We borrow, we refine, and nothing stays the same. If it does, eventually, it dies. The only constant is change itself: Sho gyo mu jyo, goes the Japanese proverb.
It is this tenet that occupies my thoughts as I enter Gallery éf in Asakusa, on the eastern periphery of Tokyo on an autumn afternoon, to see a musician perform. If Krishnamurthy is a lotus, this guy is a cherry blossom. | | | |
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Readers' Comments |
Total Comments
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Mayuri
7 March 2010
06:45 AM
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Great read! Its amazing to see how a young mind could so articulately write about traditions so mature
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Otosan
4 March 2010
10:10 AM
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Well written and enjoyable read. The old vs new yet again presented in a factual way.
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S
27 February 2010
11:02 AM
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Very insightful and a great read!
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