A call from a Seraikella arts journalist, saying please help brand our Chhau, set me thinking what’s branding dance and why the need? The call also proves critics and writers can help brand dance? If they have credibility and content that is.
The caller recalls Mohan Khokar (my father) promoting Seraikella Chhau, a unique masked dance performed exclusively by royalty of yore; writing to many MPs and one PM (Indira Gandhi) and one CM (Biju Patnaik) to help reclaim this heritage of Orissa. My father went to Seraikella many times. He not only documented masks but the then master mask-maker Prasanna, whose artistry breathed life into the form.
Yes, before the map of India was redrawn after Independence, Seraikella belonged to Orissa. By drawing one line in the map, this royal principality was given to Bihar. The people were Oriya speaking and even their food habits were of that region.
Some decades later when the map of Bihar was redrawn, Seraikella became part of Jharkhand. The form now is almost a step-child, with its practitioners in dire straits, no matter what token help the Central and State agencies bestow on it.
So what's dance got to do with branding today? Think of Kerala and one thinks of Kathakali and Mohiniyattom. What's Tamil Nadu without its Bharatanatyam, even if the rest of India learns it? Kathak loosely belongs to Hindi heartland, roughly half of India — North, West and central regions.
Orissi, Odissi now Odishi is of Odisha. Manipuri is from Manipur. Kuchipudi is from a village by that name, the form now belonging to both Andhra and Telangana. A gentle movement has already begun to make Perini the mascot or dance symbol of Telangana.
A mission
Bengal — for all its literary and cultural pedigree — has no classical form of its own and has long desired one. Ninety-plus Valmiki Banerjee's lifetime mission has been to make Rabindra Natyam (a mix for various forms Tagore promoted at Santiniketan) its own. That he has still not been given the Sangeet Natak Akademi award shows the lacunas in the award selection system. It also shows how much artistes care for fellow artistes that no one has even nominated him in last 50 years! This when he lives in Delhi and has taught three generations of dancers.
T.S. Eliot wrote in 1948 a series of articles that was turned into a book called Notes Towards the Definition of Culture. It remains a classic in understanding culture.
What is this thing called culture? Can all human endeavours be compressed under the umbrella of culture? When we say Indian or Japanese culture what does it mean? Arts, crafts, architecture, food, the way we live, all come under culture? Can a country of India's size and complexity have one cultural policy? Why there is none?
The mistake many countries do is to treat only song and dance as part of culture. Take India. India followed the Soviet approach to most things, after Independence. Our first generation leaders chose European models in science, arts and cultural institutions. Centralised and State subsidised institutions of learning and earning.
The current situation
Today, many of these cultural institutions have collapsed. Museums look like museum pieces; national cultural institutions have become notional. What’s the output of our national akademies? Should giving awards and doing festivals be the only focus. Aren’t saving heritage, documenting arts, encouraging publications, research and nurturing generation next important too?
Strangely enough, it is dance which is our national cultural symbol. Bharatanatyam, Odishi, Kathakali and Kathak or any other form, even Bollywood. For their Majesties of Belgium on a State visit to India currently, Bollylicious was presented. That's the name of the dance company. A fusion of forms.
Dance today is omnipresent. Television has discovered it with a vengeance and many out-of -work actors are acting as judges. Some even teaching on TV how to dance. All of India seems to be dancing. Why not?
The writer, a critic and historian, is the author of several books and edits attenDance, a yearbook