Themes of nature are copiously available in classical dance performances in the form of glorifying imageries and narratives. Though depicting love in the time of spring and celebrating other such moods of seasons and nature might produce thrilling imagery, there seems to be little thought about what it means to perform on such themes in the context of environmental crisis. After a simple examination of newspapers, a friend pointed out the number of classical dancers who were putting up performances celebrating the profusion and abundance of rivers during the same time when Kerala was hit by floods without any acknowledgement of its occurance. At a time when the conflict between classical dance and life is appalling, “Six Feet Land and Us”, a Bharathanatyam production conceptualized and choreographed by Anuradha Venkataraman comes as a sigh of relief.
“Six Feet Land and Us” is a Bharathanatyam production that depicts episodically the plight of a woman who is looking for a piece of land to bury her dead child. Through this narrative, the dancers highlight the consequences of exploitative relationship that humans have come share with the land. This piece was performed in Seva Sadan last Friday. While the dancers - Deepa Raghavan, Radhika Ramanujan, Aruna Bhargavi, Annapoorna Krishnaprasad perform the shifting landscapes (the cityscape, forest, water and the farm), Anuradha embodies the role of the mother. By situating Bharathantyam in a new relevant context, the piece makes the thought behind the production visible in the coming together of its choreography, poetry, music, vocals, nattuvanga, lighting as well as the costume. Along with the choreography that lent new meanings to Bharathantyam movements (such as the uniform, repetitive nrtta evoking images of city life), it was aurally impressionable to singularly hear the vocals and the nattuvanga. The lighting too played a role in generating telling visuals on stage.
Though it is evident that the performance tells us the story of a mourning woman who also stands as a metaphor of the choking land, as an audience one does feel that the character of the woman makes a partial appearance on stage. One wishes to know more about her – what is she thinking? Is she angry? Is she questioning us? What is her social reality?
In its present form, her character seems self-contained and might have probably been more effective had she reached out to the audience. Since people in the audience too contribute to the reality depicted on stage, could we have been made to confront that reality by breaking the fourth wall? What would have happened if the mourning mother had gazed at the audience with questioning eyes? As a piece that depicts the reality of the woman who suffers the consequences of the humanity’s parasitic relationship with land, it owes it to her to make her voice heard clearly, her uncomfortable presence asserted more firmly. Moreover, while classical dancers are often used to perform to the audience’s gaze it would have been interesting as well as empowering to explore what it means to look back especially as a woman that society has failed miserably.
Having said this, one must applaud this piece for representing a woman in classical dance who is more than a heroine, a woman who inhabits a harsh social reality and fights its consequences alone without mourning for the absence of any man. In a dance culture which often involves women from upper class (even upper caste) backgrounds playing roles of mythical heroines to the patronizing gaze of the privileged audience, it is challenging to stage a character who comes from a background starkly different from the one associated with the world of Bharathanatyam. Therefore, making it all the more necessary to make her presence more visible.