Fortunately, dance has been an area where women have had equal, if not more, preference than men. But that is also because of the male gaze on the idea of the feminine and the preference of it in dance to create pleasing visuals. It is predominantly so in Mohiniyattam where women have been seen as a medium to exude sringara and lasya, and any aberration from its broad precept would make her work look perplexing and the dancer, an oddity.
It is not coincidental that there are more male critics of Mohiniyattam than women, and with the expectation that a dancer adhere to strictures ordained by an underlying dogma inherently imposed on the art form and its practitioners since its known history. Male dancers are not fully embraced into the fold of performance or the formal academic of Mohiniyattam. Some important dance institutions even deny them opportunities to pursue a degree in the art form.
Mohiniyattam is deemed to be a high-class art form derived from other superior art forms, and the more stylised it is, the better it delights the connoisseurs. The first thing I was asked by a Koodiyattam exponent when I set foot in a heritage cultural university as a visiting faculty member was whether I was high-born. Did that alone make one competent to practise the art form, I wondered!
We have been dancing to the tunes of the kings and the priestly class but we have forgotten to reach out to the common man. Our hand gestures are mostly intelligible to only such a class. I had initially looked out for compositions by women and I could hardly find any. The woman composer or poet’s takes on intricacies of love, lust, separation, vatsalya or bhakti would have been different. History has had references to Meerabhai, Karaikkal Ammaiyar and Andal, but they were lauded because they were hermits. Where were the compositions of the common women? We had kritis of Kuttykunji Thangachi, who, again, followed norms of her male peers. Who dictated the feminine construct in Mohiniyattam and why did the women teachers unconsciously find themselves ensnared by it?
Notice a cartoon published in 1940 by Viswaroopam magazine illustrated by M Bluskaran in which a Mohiniyattam dancer is seen dancing amongst men. The illustration seems to be a criticism against Mahakavi Vallathol who was trying to revive the dance form then. It was a period in history when the dance form was also considered ‘dis’graceful. The cartoon text roughly translates as: “It is unfortunate that while Mahakavi Vallathol congratulates the Cochin Government for re-implementing dasiyattam, he fails to see the lustful men who hide behind each dancer.” Of course, Mahakavi Vallathol did everything in his might to resurrect Mohiniyattam, and the present-day dancer does not remotely look or perform like the one in the cartoon, thanks to him! With all the resurrection and redefinitions, the dance form has thrived, but not without certain veiled paradigms.
The many lacunae in the dance form have made one probe into other facets, which could strengthen the art form both intrinsically and laterally. Whenever I probed into its primitivism, the art form felt more grounded and whenever I pondered over its other realms, irrespective of language and region, it felt more liberating and dynamic. The compositions of both the Brahmin and the Dalit wove the same mystical ecstasy. Otherworldliness sought equal expression through performance. I have, over the years, also understood that as much as communication is pertinent to reach out, one need not be bound by it. Most of the people who understood wholesome work were usually those who were not attuned to Mohiniyattam. I also realised that not all dance sequences were meant to be understood. Some didn’t even seem to belong to public performance spaces. To me, performing a Navavaranam is as esoteric as reciting Lalitha Sahasranamam in the confines of your worship space, the communication being only internal. Each performance has an emotional impact and each symbol an implication. As one goes through non-physical symbols and motifs, one is drawn into this never-ending maze. Sometimes, the internalising is so strong that it has implications. Each work has a story to say and dance is an autobiography. One can gauge the artiste’s life on close analysis.
Creativity comes easy but the restlessness of it comes easier too. It latches on to you like a leech until it is delivered and just as you bask in the glory of its consummation, the next idea latches on to you. Ideas are a continuous process and most of them emerge and die in the stage of the mind. Raising art along with raising a family is tough. It’s as important as your family but needs more nursing as every work of art would be in its gestation period before it springs forth to independence. It’s either on its own or never on its own. Art is sensitive and people need to be sensitised towards it, which makes the family of an artiste play a vital role. There is no set practice time. Any space, including the kitchen, can transform into practice kalari at a given point of time. There is a natural urge to attend to familial responsibilities but there’s a stronger urge to attend to artistic responsibilities. I like to be minimalistic in my dance too because whenever I stretch what I already have and put it to good use, I find myself become more creative. I never suffocate my work with too many embellishments because that’s not me.
Although the art form I practise is stylised and demands a certain tempering, the purport of art, I realise, must also be to reach a larger audience. Gender, religion and all differences are neutralised in art. I was once told that if there is a big crowd that comes to witness your art, then there is something wrong. But I would no longer buy it. I go back to the remark of a dancer who told me that she didn’t like my four-minute short on Nangeli, a small sequence performed in a different genre. It was less complicated, simple and not quite my style but had appealed to the public. So, the fact that it was simple and had catered to a common man’s taste had made it distasteful to the expert dancer. Don’t blame her as I myself would have earlier thought so. I no longer assimilate art against perspectives or preconceived yardsticks. There is so much we don’t do out of fear of these benchmarks.
Dance cannot be studied or created in an aesthetic vacuum. It may initially seem like an isolated phenomenon but there is a relationship between the environment and the choreographic work of a dancer. All seminars and workshops on dance hardly address the future of dance or dancers vis-a-vis society. At the end of each gathering, I have always ended up feeling more throttled than liberated because the art form aims to be more restrictive. Art is about self-realisation and one can’t do it without self-release. But one must spend ages living within its rules, experiencing them till it becomes second nature. And once that becomes the lived body, all explorations, no matter how traditional or avant-garde, become authentic.
No matter how important a venue or how prestigious it is, there is nothing as prestigious as the art itself. I am no longer lured by venues that do not respect an artiste and lay out concerts that only seem like an assembly-line display of perfect art and artistes. Perfect lines, flawless bodies and complicated jathis have become a necessity for performance, not to mention the extraordinary networking skills. But it has come to a point where one also wishes to see opportunities for original work by lesser-known dancers who have been relentlessly working and contributing to the art. One wishes to see something more soulful, more real and simple than a virtuoso technical exercise.
(The writer is an academic, choreographer and Mohiniyattam exponent)