Contemporary Indian dancers are drawing on
classical traditions to craft a new aesthetic and
vocabulary of dance
that reflect current sensibilities.
Every art form reflects the sociocultural milieu of its existence.
For any creative artiste, it is extremely important to imbibe the
nuances of her times and interpret them through her art. Towards that
end, practitioners of contemporary dance in India are demonstrating a
remarkable finesse.
India has an immensely rich heritage of classical dance. Timeless in
its beauty and appeal, Indian classical dance has already won global
acclaim. The biggest challenge for many Indian dancers today is how to
dive deeper into that reservoir of tradition to draw inspiration, and
yet transcend and go beyond conventional practices to create a new dance
aesthetic which is more reflective of the concerns and sensibilities of
contemporary India.
The trend started as early as the 1920s with Uday Shankar, who is
considered the father of modern Indian dance. Today’s dancers are highly
creative, thinking individuals who incorporate new themes of
contemporary relevance like those related to gender and the environment.
They do not shy away from experimenting with different types of music,
and creating a new movement vocabulary and completely fresh forms of
presentation, be it multi-media or cross-cultural fusions like a mix of
kathak and flamenco. Some dancers, like Astaad Deboo and Daksha Seth,
had their training in various forms of classical dance, but journeyed
away from it by creating a novel vocabulary of movement. Others, like
Aditi Mangaldas in kathak and Geeta Chandran in bharatanatyam, have
worked within the framework of their respective forms, yet expanded
their boundaries to create refreshingly startling new horizons.
Last year, I had the opportunity to work closely with four of the
renowned contemporary women dancers in India – Aditi Mangaldas, Anita
Ratnam, Daksha Seth and Mallika Sarabhai – for a film I made on
contemporary dance in India, titled
Beyond Tradition. It was
interesting to note the existence of certain commonalities, alongside
many differences, in the approach and works of these dancers. All of
them are trained classical dancers who imbibed their inspirations from
Indian traditions, be it in form or theme. Each dancer boasts a
collection of works which are universal in appeal and of international
standard in terms of presentation. And yet it takes just one look at
their work to realise that it cannot stem from anywhere else other than
India. This is one aspect common to all four dancers, whose productions
are markedly different from the works of many dancers of Indian origin
settled abroad. A prime example of the latter category is Akram Khan,
the UK-based, kathak-trained dancer who is making waves in the
international dance circuit. Akram uses a lot of Indian elements in his
dance, especially the fast rhythmic footwork and pirouettes of kathak,
yet his work is more reflective of the diaspora.
While filming
Beyond Tradition, I also realised another common
point that binds the four women dancers – at some point or the other,
they have worked with feminist issues. But there the similarity ends.
Each dancer’s strong individual personality and approach make her works
unique. As a social and political activist, Mallika Sarabhai reflects
sociopolitical themes in her works. Daksha Seth, on the other hand, is
focused more just on the art of dance per se, and her concern is to
create a different movement vocabulary that challenges the limits of
physicality. Anita Ratnam delves deeper into Indian myths and
traditions, re-interpreting them in a contemporary light. A stunningly
beautiful woman herself, she is not overly bothered with the physical
attributes of a dancer. In fact, I was surprised to find a slightly
overweight dancer in her group. She dismissed the issue, saying as long
as a dancer is fit enough to dance, nothing else matters. On the
contrary, Aditi Mangaldas is extremely particular about being
overweight. One of the fittest (and slimmest) dancers of her age group,
she is known to tick off her own dancers if they tend to put on weight.
In making
Beyond Tradition,
I missed having a male
dancer in the film. Without the participation of Astad Deboo, who
unfortunately was not available for the film, the final product was not
totally reflective of the contemporary dance scene in India.
No discussion on contemporary dance in India would be complete
without a mention of Chandralekha. A true revolutionary in the field of
dance, she deconstructed and de-contextualised bharatanatyam and
elevated it to iconoclastic and completely different levels, much to the
wrath of purists.
Contemporary dance in India today reflects the spirit of a
contemporary, modern nation that is proud of its wealth of cultural
diversity. Yet, Indian contemporary dance has been bold enough to
question and re-interpret the old in the light of modern-day
sensibilities, remaining firmly rooted in tradition even as it seeks to
fly high in the sky, which seems to be the limit for today’s pirouetting
contemporary Indian dancers.
