Dances and Dance Dramas of South East Asia Mask Dances of South East Asia /Asia-Pacific Countries Research Methodologies for Performing Arts (Dance) Dance Therapy
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PAPER 8 DANCES AND DANCE DRAMAS OF SOUTH EAST ASIA MASK DANCES OF SOUTH EAST ASIA /ASIA-PACIFIC COUNTRIES RESEARCH METHODOLOGIES FOR PERFORMING ARTS (DANCE) DANCE THERAPY MODULE 27 DANCE AS SEEN IN THE FILMS There is a close link between films and dance. Apart from the explanation of this drawing on the Natyashastric model, there was another reason. And that is, that in its early days, the film industry was looked at in a negative manner and so women did not join it. In fact history has it on record that although he tried, Dada Saheb Phalke/दादा साहेफ पारके , the director of Raja Harishchandra/याजा हरयशचॊद्र was unable to even get a “Nautch girl” interested in playing the role of Taramati/तायाभती in the film. That is why the earliest films have males enacting the roles of women characters. The first women to join films came from the professional singing women community, the tawaifs and the Devadsis, who were trained in dance and music. Among the conditions that disempowered their traditional way of life was the social morality issue that resulted in the demand for banning the ‘Nautch”. The British period was a dark period for the tawaifs as due to the fact that the British had no understand of the refined poetry or the music and dance that they performed saw them only as sex workers. Further with the abolition of zamindari system, the local support that they enjoys was also 1 denied to them. Some struggled to find domestic bliss, others slipped into commercial sex work and some found other way to employ their talents. The tawaifs and devadasis often got re- inscribed as performance artistes by the gramophone recording companies and the Film industry. Often the same artistes, basically the ones who were proactively embracing modernity, crossed over from being a recorded artiste and a film artiste. Even as they attempted to embrace modernity, they faced hurdles and found their options limited. For example, one of the first acts of the interim government of 1946 was to bar singers and musicians from the “courtesan” culture, which was described by David Lelyveld as “anyone whose private life was a public scandal.” To an extent the nationalist discourse continued replicating certain logics of exclusion, like in the case of courtesan women, around the idea of a national culture. Further, Partha Chatterjee in his essay,’ The Nation and its Women’, has argued that the inner (domestic) domain of women became invested with the urgency of preserving the sanctity of national culture. At the same time, the nationalist discourse was trying to purify itself of bad influences like the courtesan women, that is why the nationalist movement found its early expressions in the form of social reform programmes, such as the antinatch campaigns, through which the richly diverse and stratified group of courtesan women was reduced into a homogenous group which was a threat to the wellbeing of the society. People like Rabindranath Tagore, Madame Menaka, Rukmini Devi Arundale, and Pandit Vishnu Bhatkhande all played a major role in this project. 2 Yet in initially, in the early 20th century, one found an increasing prominence of women from a courtesan background in the cinema and gramophone industries. Their journey was not easy. In fact Shyam Benegal’s film Bhumika/बूमभका captures this aspect and Smita Patil’s role as Usha is a fictionalized version of what was happening. Thus, while the film industry opened its arms to embrace several former tawaifs and devadasis, including M. S. Subbulakshmi who went on to be awarded a Bharat Ratna later. Subhalakshmi acted in a Tamil film called “Sevasadanam” about the child bride of an older Brahmin man, in 1938. She also acted in several other films including meera made in Tamil in 1945 and in Hindi in 1947. Possibly Subhalakshmi’s success despite her origins, stemmed from the fact that she had successfully migrated into a domestic space, for India’s whole modern project has been founded on the gender make up of chaste womanhood. There was a similar project in the Bombay film industry- that too got turned middle class and got made respectable, accounting for an early marginalisation of women from such a background. Another example was that of Jaddan Bai/जद्दन फाई, a well-known tawaif who moved from singing to acting in films and thereafter, direction. Jaddan bai is the mother of the actress Nargis. She later began acting when the Play Art Photo Tone Company of Lahore approached her for a role in their movie Raja Gopichand/याजा गोऩीचॊद in 1933. She played the role of the mother of the title character. Later she worked for a Karachi based film company, in Insaan ya Shaitan/इन्सान मा शैतान She worked in two 3 more movies, Prem Pariksha/प्रेभ ऩयीऺा and Seva Sadan/सेवा सदन , before starting her own production company called Sangeet Films. The company produced Talashe Haq/तराशे हक़ in 1935, in which she acted and composed the music. She also introduced her daughter Nargis as a child artist. In 1936 she acted in, directed, and wrote the music for Madam Fashion. One dancer who was very much in the forefront of shearing the stigma of the devadasi culture from dance was madam Menaka. Menaka changed the face of what came to be known as Kathak of today, by taking away any reflections of the Tawaif culture’s association with the art, including items from its repertoire an also its musical scape, especially its long association with the sarangi. This sort of attitude left the Devadasis with no options but to take to other forums especially movies. Yet, just as the tawaifs and devadasis were struggling to find a foot hold in films, one of the most severe baiters, Madame Menaka became the first to dance on screen when she performed in The Tiger of Eschnapur (1938, Germany) and a British documentary, Temples of India. Menaka, the stage name for Leila Sokhey in real life, was said to have transformed the maligned tawaif’s nautch into the respectable Kathak. In 1930s, when women dancing in public was stigmatised as ‘prostitutes’, this Brahmin was refashioning the dance of Avadh’s storytellers through performances in Europe and Southeast Asia. Few among the patriarchal practitioners gave her credit for this when she died (1947), perhaps because what she presented to foreigners was a generic, Uday Shankar kind of 4 aesthetics that had greater kinship with Javanese dancing than with Achhan Maharaj of Lucknow. However, that could be why German director Richard Eichberg, in search of Oriental exotica, excerpted her productions Krishna Leela and Dev Vijaya Nritya, complete with her costumes. DANCERS AS ACTORS Classical dancers as protagonists posed two problems to filmmakers. One: while many actors (even after playback singing was introduced) could sing, not many were dancers. Secondly, as part of the Modernity project of India, by 1947, when India became independent, women dancers had fallen into disrepute and classical dance was a male preserve. Many films reflected that- Geet Gaya Patharon ne/गीत गामा ऩथ्थयोने”, Jal Bin machhali, Nritya Bin Bijli/जर बफन भछरी नत्ृ म बफन बफजरी , Mughal-e-Azam/भुग़र-ए-आज़भ, Pakeeza/ऩाकीज़ा, Guide, Teesri Kasam/तीसयी कसभ , Devdas/देवदास, based on the story of professional dancing women or their daughters were the subject of the film. To overcome this hurdle, actresses like Madhubala, Meena Kumari or Nargis - not raised in dance like Vyjayanthimala, Padmini or Waheeda Rehman - had a pristine guru in say a Lachhu Maharaj and Naushad, an unsurpassed devotee of classicism in films, tweaking ragas and choreographies to highlight portrayal. It was Lacchu Maharaj who choreographed the ‘Thade rahiyo’ number in “Pakeeza”. Saheb Bibi Ghulam/साहेफ फीफी औय गुराभऺ presented the other side of the story, 5 where even upper-class husbands confined wives to the ‘andar- mahal’ – inner courtyard - as child-bearing machines, rather than be a friend, confidante and mistress. An anguished Chhoti Bahu (Meena Kumari) revolts against this, in vain: her husband spurns her companionship for that of a naachnewaali who sings ‘Saqiyaa aaj mujhe neend nahin aayegi’. Minu Mumtaz never bettered this Odissi-inspired number that oozed enough sensuality to be a precursor of today’s item songs. DANCING PROTAGONISTS Two names outshine all others: Vaijayantimala and Waheeda Rehman. At age 5, Vaijayanti had performed for Pope Pius XII and had her arangetram at 13. She learnt Bharatanatyam under Vazhuvoor Ramaiah Pillai, and Carnatic music too. She was already famous in Tamil films when she debuted in” Bahar/फहाय” (1951). She brought the film to life with her dances that were new for north Indians. Her dances were the saving grace of “Ladki/रड़की”. Man dole re in “Nagin/नागगन’ (1954) let loose a string of innocent ‘tribal’ belles, the most successful being “Madhumati/भधुभती” (1958). Before that, though, Vaijayanti had graduated from being a ‘dancer’ to an ‘actress’ in “Devdas/देवदास” (1955) where, ironically, she played a fallen woman who gives up dancing. The social attitude towards dancers can be gauged from the furor Bimal Roy unleashed by choosing to cast Vaijayanti as 6 Chandramukhi. But her reputation as dancer mixed with her evolution as a woman who sacrifices her career for love won sympathy, admiration, universal love. It marked her rise from glamour to histrionic heights - without sacrificing her dance. Roy himself tapped it again in Madhumati. The ravishing beauty, seen in three incarnations, mesmerized as the twinkle-toed Madhu, the tribal who knew every tree in the jungle and could beat the ‘Paapi Bichhua’ at its own game.