It Matters for Whom You Dance: Audience Participation in Rasa Theory
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It Matters For Whom You Dance: Audience Participation in Rasa Theory Uttara Asha Coorlawala The reign of the Emporer Akbar, the Mughal ruler, is celebrated in tales as a period when Hindus and Muslims went beyond respect and tolerance to explore the arts, concepts and lifestyles of the other. In this story, Akbar’s court was graced by the musical genius of singer Tansen, whose renditions of raga were so accurate on the subtle realms of sound, that they could induce rain or fire. One day Tansen sang a song, composed by the blind seer and poet Surdas, that deeply touched Akbar’s heart. The Emporer Akbar summoned Surdas to the royal court but his messengers dallied in Surdas’ presence. Eventually, when they returned, they were transformed, but arrived without the singing sage. Noticing their state, Akbar decided to visit Surdas in his forest hermitage. After returning to his court in Agra, Akbar began to needle Tansen: “O Tansen, I always thought you were the most amazing and wonderful singer alive, but now I have heard Surdas. Tell me, how is it, that the impact of his singing is exceedingly more profound than yours?” Tansen replied “O my liege, undoubtedly Tansen sings for the Greatest Emperor on Earth, (Jahanpanah) but Surdas--he sings for God.” The implication could not be stated more effectively that a performer is only as great as her/his audience.1 Despite its tit-for-tat humour, this legend propels us straight to the core of the interactive aspect of ancient Indian aesthetic theory of rasa. The performer-audience relationship that it exemplifies informs current praxis, aesthetic structures, grammars and conventions of traditional performance. This legend illuminated my own experience as a performer in India in the seventies, when television, internationally convertible currency and globalism had not yet inflected the lives of most urban persons. Performing the same solo concert in major Indian cities 2 and for not-so-metropolitan audiences taught me that performance is an ongoing dialogue between performer and audience. Audience members indicated their preferences by the way that they attended to the event, drawing closer, becoming restive, still, or discussing the dance even as it was occurring. Some audiences gave love and support, others drained energy into a consuming black hole. Some bore witness to an inner journey adding their intensity and experience into the mix of my body memories. Others withdrew in resistance. Finally, in the early eighties, I had the great joy of performing on three separate occasions for the rasikā (ideal spectator) of my innermost desires, - my spiritual guru Swami Muktananda Paramahamsa or “Baba.”2 As I continued to travel and perform internationally, I realized that my ideal spectator had transformed my awareness of performance; that each performance subtly and profoundly clarified and intensified my awareness of audiences and of dancing. In seeking to understand more on this mysterious and wonderful dialogue between performer-audience, I found it exemplified in live performances, in stories about performers and most profoundly in the theoretical expositions of bhāva and in the ways that dances can be deliberately structured so as to ensure that viewers remain active and alert. The Ideal Spectator or Rasikā: In Indian dance, the performer-audience relationship has historically been considered crucial in determining the quality of performances. If a performance is to be deemed successful, there must be rasa. But it is not the performer's responsibility to evoke rasa. The performer's role is to represent the prescribed emotional moods or bhāva with sustained clear focus.3 Sattva, or the luminous communicative energy (presence serves as a partial synonym) that results from the performer’s bodily activities and mental focus becomes flavoured, as it were, with the 2 3 appropriate emotion - bhāva. The sympathetic (sa-hridaya) but critically discerning viewer (rasikā) apprehends this emotion not as a cathartic experience, but as rasa (NātyaŚastra, Chapter 27, verses 49-58 hereafter written as NS 27, 49-58). “Rasa” literally translates as that which is tasted, relished. Rasa is a reflective experience of tasting, rather than of devouring or being devoured by emotions. Rasa involves seeing with an inner eye, hearing resonances, and touching inner spaces.4 Until the poem is read, it has no existence. Unless the spatial aesthetic and symbolic characteristics of a sculpture are apprehended, it is no more than inert stone. An image of a deity in the temple, a moorti, remains just another icon, until the worshipper is transformed in its presence. Without at least one viewer to taste, (even when that viewer is The Unseen Witness) there cannot be a performance. This leisurely inner savoring of a performance or a work of art is not only a mental practice assiduously cultivated by those educated in traditional Indian arts and literary forms. The intensity of this experience of rasa is the measure by which success is evaluated. Rasa may involve a spontaneous experience of insight (pratyaksha). Very often, a performer in Indian dance will attribute a spontaneous flash of creative improvisation to the presence of rasikā(s). Accomplished and master performers build audience dialogue into their presentations: After performing a few items Birju Maharaj said he was very uncomfortable and requested that the overhead nontheatrical lighting be turned on, so that he could see the faces of the audience. He spoke in English (which he rarely speaks) for his invited guests who were unfamiliar with Kathak. Once the lights were turned on, he appeared to be more at ease, structuring his presentation according to the responses of the audience and playing off their moods. At the end of the performance, when he was being showered with 3 4 applause he said in wonder, that it was the heart of the audience that had inspired him, that he had found himself performing with insights and subtleties that surprised him; he did not know from where they came, but that it had to do with ‘the heart of the audience.’ He said that the rasa of this performance would surely remain with him for a week.5 And the reverse unfortunately holds true too. At one of Balasaraswati's appearances at the Jacob's Pillow theatre, she is said to have cut short her performance. When asked about this she is said to have felt that the audience had been insensitive to her art. However, she declared that she would not be averse to performing for the students and faculty on that same evening after the paying public went home. Apparently she did just that and held them enthralled. So goes this story told by Ted Shawn in one of his ‘curtain speeches’6 to educate American dancegoers to performer-audience conventions of other cultures. In Bombay, I was attending a concert featuring the wellknown singer Bhimsen Joshi. Beside me a gentleman slouched back in his chair, his eyes half-closed. About forty-five minutes into the performance he suddenly sat up alert and beaming. Noting my interest in his changed demeanour, he bubbled over, “Now – now he has warmed up! Now [music] begins.” How I had misperceived this person! Now clearly his patience, stamina, generosity and discerning expectations all signaled “rasikā!” Rasa Theory In order for the reader to better follow how rasa theory informs the performer-audience relationship, I need to make a brief digression to summarize how rasa is currently generated in performances of Indian dance that may be new but in accordance with historic prescriptions. The concept of rasa itself has generated two kinds of written texts, the philosophical inquiry which 4 5 involves dialogue between various scholars (Bharata, Bhatta Lollatta, Shri Shankuka, Bhatta Nāyaka, Abhinavagupta7, etc.) down the ages, and practical manuals of instruction (Natyashastra, Abhinayadarpana, Kāmasūtra, Sangītaratnākara, Vishnudharmottara Purāna etc.). In addition, there are numerous references to dance in various regional languages, and to aspects of rasa in the Indian arts from poetry and drama to sculpture and music.8 Currently, lineages of concepts of dance as performance, an arsenal of proscriptions, appear and reappear side by side as a palimpcest of received knowledges. Practitioners are not always meticulous about the sources of praxis, although historic manuals (shāstra) still are being invoked as evidence of the early origins of multiple lineages of dance. Whereas scholars that praxis preceded the writing of these historic manuals, today performers often assume the reverse, i.e. that practice followed the writings, as this more accurately reflects not only their own relationships with these movement texts, but also the recent processes of recovering and reconstructing Indian dances as classical forms. In this time of global diasporic movement, it is hard to hold on to the slippery meta-narrative spanning two millenniums of geo-culturally specific performance practice. Accumulating traces from previous models of rasa in performance, philosophic inquiry and imaginative play continuously layer and transform each act of interpretation, each performance. Understanding and conceiving rasa is an intertextual game of reading/interpreting written and performed texts as their changing contexts continue to change their meanings. The following description summarizes conventional processes of generating rasa that are based on praxis and the principles listed in aesthetic texts and manuals. A poet, director, performer or playwright will first determine a thematic mood or sthāyi bhāva whose flavour will permeate the entire performance from nine generic emotional states as delight, laughter, sorrow, 5 6 anger, heroism, fear, disgust, wonder and peace. Different dance forms prefer different bhāva. For example, Kathakali dance dramas may dwell on heroism and martial accomplishments, (vīrya) whereas Bharatanatyam dancers might focus on the theme of delighting in love of the eternal (bhakti-sringār). Buddhist dance dramas choose peace (shānti) as their generic bhāva.