Dance in India inhabits many worlds. Its sophisticated classicism includes many vocabularies with varying accents: the facial and gestural emotiveness of Koodiyattam and Kathakali, the geometry and rhythmic virtuosity of Bharatanatyam, Kathak and Kuchipudi, and the lyrical grace of Odissi, Sattriya and Mohiniattam. Folk dances expressive of seasonal rhythms and life-patterns enjoy greater community participation.
Contemporary dance has come of age and film dances, too, have a long legacy. The varied Indian dance forms have often met. The folk (desi) and classical (margi) expressions have a symbiotic relationship, and influences from beyond the borders have a long history.
The technique and stylistics of a dance language defines its identity even as it threads continuity and change through time. Looking at dancers and musicians carved on the windows of the Mukteshwar temple in Bhubaneshwar, Odisha, for example, we recognise the postures, gestures and movement-modes of Odissi, even though much of the context and repertoire has been transformed during its long journey from medieval temples to the theatres of modern India.
The body language of a dancer is equally telling. From complex technical virtuosities to the simplest action performed by a dancer, ‘movement never lies,’ as Martha Graham has famously said. When dancers perform, they reveal themselves. ‘Dance for me a minute and I’ll tell you who you are,’ is the felt experience of dancer and choreographer Mikhail Baryshnikov.
An exquisite 10th century sculpture from Harshagiri near Sikar in Rajasthan reveals such truths about dancers, sculptors, stylistics, body language and performance practices, as these prevailed in western India a millennium ago (photo). This animated panel was part of a grand temple to Shiva as Harshadeva, whose construction was started by Allata and completed by his disciple Bhavadyota, influential brahmins during Chahmana rule. Part of a long frieze of dancers, it is now the proud possession of the Cleveland Museum of Art in the US.
Looking at it compels more careful seeing, reflecting, and returning to it again, only to be intrigued or exhilarated by the discovery of yet another detail. At its centre is a dancer in all her refinements, her legs in the half-seated posture forming a square, her arms counterpoised with the lower half. Her right heel is raised and the little toes turn inwards, a detail matched by finer nuances of her hand gestures, leaving us expectant for the next moment in dance. She dances to the music of her accompanying artists; the grace of whose twirling bodies is no less dancerly. To the dancer’s left is a dignified percussionist, the guru, playing a pakhawaj-like drum.
The sculptor of this remarkable composition has bracketed the dancer and her guru between a flautist and another percussionist, whose handsome bodies dance to the melody and rhythm of the music they create. At the extreme right, a lady with cymbals sings or recites the syllables, evident in the way her mouth opens. Next to her, a woman wields the khanjari, while another lady plays a lute nearer the opposite end. As one imagines movement and experiences repose where dance, music and sculpture converge, TS Eliot comes to mind: ‘At the still point of the turning world, there is the dance.’
Such stillness and repose cannot be sought in the impatient agitation of sentimental hyper-nationalism. That elusive quality of the finest in art, old or new, eludes us in the thumping assertations of Naatu Naatu. Just as the self-assured lions on the ancient Sarnath capital are a long distance away from the aggression of their modern incarnations atop our new Parliament building.
