Ritusamhara, Kalidasa’s ode to the seasons. Life in Odisha. The saint poet Meerabai’s spiritual trajectory. The shared histories of music and dance in ancient and medieval north India. Assertive interpretations of modernity in classical storytelling. All these experiences, and then some more, are on offer at the 2017 edition of NCPA’s Nakshatra Dance Festival this weekend. Five renowned choreographers – Aruna Mohanty, Chitra Visweswaran, Daksha Mashruwala, Kumudini Lakhia and Parwati Dutta – will present new and old group choreographic work at the festival.
Poetry in motion
All the choreographers draw inspiration from their surroundings and preoccupations. Daksha Mashruwala’s Odissi company, Kaishiki, collaborates with Kalanjay Dance Academy, a school of Indian folk dances, helmed by choreographer Vaishali Sagar. Using Kalidasa’s epic Sanskrit text Ritusamhara as a script for their collaboration, Samagam, the dancers piece together a narrative about the six seasons – spring, summer, monsoon, autumn, fall and winter. The Sanskrit poetry is danced in Odissi, while the folk dancers from Kalanjay bring in seasonal and festive dances from across the country.
Meanwhile, in Bhubaneswar, dancer Aruna Mohanty of Orissa Dance Academy uses Odissi to detail the lifestyle and culture of her home state. Her production Jatraa: The Journey of Odissi, attempts to emphasise the regional flavours of Odisha. It marks time through a chronological study of local seasons and festivals. This is further nuanced by attention to the state’s history, modes of worship, textile traditions and the daily lives of citizens across Odisha. Mohanty hopes that these strands of information will help the viewer understand how Odissi is shaped by its social and geographical context.
Back in Maharashtra, dancers at the Mahagami Gurukul in Aurangabad are turning their attention to the past. Parwati Dutta, the gurukul’s director, corrals her research on older traditions of Hindustani music and her knowledge of kathak to make Iti. She particularly focuses on dhrupad, a genre of vocal music that is the predecessor of modern-day khyal singing in Hindustani music, and the pakhawaj, a percussion instrument used in the performance of both dhrupad and Kathak. Dutta has chosen dhrupad bandishes based on the poetry of Tulsidas and compositions ascribed to the Mughal emperor Akbar’s court musician Tansen.
Dialogues in dance
In Iti, Kathak as a language is placed in dialogue with dhrupad and pakhawaj. This allows the dance to unfold at the same pace as music, going beyond time-bound movement to focus on fluidity and lyricism as key qualities of movement. “Most of our vocabulary in Kathak comes from the sound of the pakhawaj. It has nourished the form and built a symbiotic relationship with it. Also, poetry gives us a vivid image of what was being danced in ancient and medieval times. Dhrupad is not just a manner of singing or composition; it is a philosophy of music that begins to define how you can start dwelling in the space. It would have been such a meditative experience for the artist to dance to the alaap (the improvised section of a raga) for a longer time instead of merely focusing on rhythm,” Dutta explained.
Old stories, new take
How does one bring new perspective to a popular story? The life and work of the medieval saint-poet Meera has been explored repeatedly in dance, music, and theatre. So when the Bharatanatyam exponent Chitra Visweswaran was invited to make a work on Meerabai, she decided to find a fresh take on the story. As a student of Hindi literature, she was fascinated by Meera’s spiritual journey and wondered if one could trace this through her poetry. This led to Meera: The Soul Divine, with known and lesser known compositions by Meerabai set to music by the Carnatic vocalist Bombay Jayashri.
Visweswaran’s choreography sees an older Meerabai looking back at her life. In order to help her dancers at the Chidambaram Dance Company access the historical and spiritual context of the work, she drew parallels to present-day life. “I took them into the psyche of Meera. Through her spiritual evolution, anyone who is a seeker can identify with her journey. Even now, it is difficult for us to forsake material comforts. Meera was born a princess and she lived a life of luxury. How intense must that love (for Krishna) be for her to leave her luxurious life and move on?” she asks.
As part of the process, Visweswaran also imagined how Meera was received by the other people in her life. “As a young bride, Meera enters her husband’s home singing songs to Krishna. Her husband thinks the songs are about him and he is thrilled. Eventually, he realises her love for Krishna and this results in a journey from eagerness to disappointment to anger and finally, understanding,” shares Visweswaran.
Contemporary yet traditional
Ahmedabad-based Kumudini Lakhia’s Kathak institution Kadamb closes the festival. Lakhia is witty and acerbic when she speaks of Kathak – and this seeps into her work. As a young dancer, her bold artistic choices shook up the establishment. Kathak is known as ‘natwari nritya’ due to the extensive references it draws from Krishna lore. But there are other ways to think about Kathak, according to Lakhia. “You don’t have to carry your deity in your arm all the time. You don’t have to be Meera. You can still be religious. All the abhinaya we danced was based on mythology. Krishna is breaking a pot or stealing butter or teasing the girls. The abhinaya then becomes mime, because we show a cow when we talk about cows, a flute for a flute, and water for water. It’s just word-to-word storytelling, and the same story repeats itself in different ways,” she says. A desire to find new content that reflected the state of society led to the ruptures that would define Lakhia’s artistic practice.
It is interesting to note Lakhia’s relationship with the term ‘contemporary’. How does she view current trends in Kathak? The dance has changed, but not necessarily for the better, she feels. The fast chakkars (spins) and the profusion of footwork are a crowd-pleasing mechanism, while the subtler nuances of form slip into obscurity. The focus of learning should be on the form, not on performance. “If Kathak is made for me, what am I going to do with it? How am I going to express it?”
For Lakhia, dance training must progress towards individual creativity. She finds that young dancers lack the courage needed to do new things. She understands that this may stem from a fear of negative criticism, which gives dancers little room to err as they find their own voice. Yet, after excelling in technique, the next step, she feels, should be to “take off and look at the earth from an aeroplane”.
Nakshatra Dance Festival 2017 is ongoing at the NCPA, Nariman Point until October 29, for more details see bookmyshow