Chapter 7 Uday Shankar Style of Creative Dance – The
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CHAPTER 7 UDAY SHANKAR STYLE OF CREATIVE DANCE – THE FORM AND CONTENT The revolution that Uday Shankar brought to Indian dance, was both in form and content. According to Shankar, “From the very beginning of my artistic career, I never wanted to go on with mere repetitions, but always tried to produce something new and exclusive”.1 “I found that the older conception of our Indian dances have lost essential truths and their interpretation has become mechanical….my innovation…lay in that I created an altogether new technique’.2 To Uday Shankar, creativity meant to do something that had “not been done yet”. “My dance”, he said, “I created. I got inspired by music sometimes, by movement in actual life sometimes”. 3 Most information sites on the internet hail Uday Shankar as a classical dancer and choreographer of the 1930s or an architect of modern dance. But according to him, he cared to be classified as neither. “I had seen so much classical ballet in Europe it was shocking for me when I first saw Modern Dance. I felt it was something being done just for the sake of doing something new. Sorry, Modern Dance does not touch me. In the composition, in the way the theme, if any, is built up, I did not find anything modern. I found it more human, more natural. 1 Uday Shankar, “My Love for Dance,” Souvenir of Shankarscope (1970) 2 Ibid 3 Mohan Khokar, His Dance His Life – A Portrait of Uday Shankar (New Delhi: Himalayan Books, 1983), 171 But I did not learn or derive anything from it. Now it is a fashion to use the word choreography in India. But I learnt this more from the Pavlova company than from anywhere else. Another thing I could learn from the West is how to compose and give ever-changing patterns of the body covering space. This I watched carefully in their ballet and then tried to see how I could use all that in my dances and ballets.”4 Therefore, it is with Uday Shankar that India witnessed the advent of the creative dance form in India – unrestricted by the constrictions of the Natya Shastra. This researcher would also like to argue that the concept of a ballet was introduced by Uday Shankar in the Indian performing arts scenario. Kathakali was perhaps the only dance form that was used as a medium to narrate various tales of mythology as well as scenes from the ancient Indian epics Ramayana and Mahabharata by multiple dancers, through the interplay of different characters. However, this could not be categorized either under creative dance or ballet as Kathakali too was restricted in nature, given that it is a classical dance form with its own set of rigid fundamentals. Nor did the dance form include group dances to be a part of the narrative to take the story ahead. The use of stage space on a professional platform in an auditorium with a number of dancers in various formations, which is an important aspect of ballet, was brought in the Indian dance form by Uday Shankar. Although there is a lot of contention on whether Shankar’s compositions can be termed as a ballet,5 nonetheless, Uday Shankar termed some of his slightly longer items as 4 Mohan Khokar, His Dance His Life – A Portrait of Uday Shankar (New Delhi: Himalayan Books, 1983), 171 5 Joan L. Erdman, “Who Remembers Uday Shankar?” accessed July 10, 2017, url: https://mm- gold.azureedge.net/new_site/mukto-mona/Articles/jaffor/uday_shanka2.html ballets. Lexically the term ballet includes a theatrical dance characterized by graceful, balanced movements with fully extended limbs, initiated from a restricted set of body positions; a theatrical work incorporating ballet dancing, music, and scenery to tell a story or convey a thematic atmosphere; or a company of dancers,6 Shankar’s form encompassed them all, except the technique of the ballet form, which he replaced with his own creative style or form. So, there should not be any doubt in his contribution to the ballet form in Indian dance. The other ways that Shankar revolutionized the Indian dance form, was that he moved away from the traditional use of mudras and facial expressions to body expression. He firmly believed that body expression should exceed the importance of facial expression and mudras. In one of his interviews he states, “I have not adopted mudras in my dance or dance dramas unless it is very necessary. Let me tell you: when a dance or dance drama is going on, perhaps vigorously with much feeling, and the dancer suddenly stops and starts ‘talking’ with mudras, it breaks. I tell you, it breaks for me the continuity…I like to show what I want to show with the body, with the body in emotion. For instance, when saying ‘I feel angry’ the dancer flutters his hands and takes leaps. Why not just show the anger? When the body is capable of showing anger, why not let it do that? I try to avoid mudras as much as possible. Mudras are beautiful and nice, but in my kind of dancing, I go for movement of the whole body to express what I want, and with no exaggeration.”7 According his Ballet Master, Shanti Bose, there was another reason for this. Dada8 - as he was addressed by those near to him, as well as his 6 http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ballet (Retrieved on July 11, 2017) 7 Mohan Khokar, His Dance His Life – A Portrait of Uday Shankar (New Delhi: Himalayan Books, 1983), 167 8 Dada – In the Bengali language, it is a way of addressing an older brother or someone who deserves respect colleagues – used to say that mudras and facial expression would be visible only to those among the audience, who were seated in the first few rows. But in order to capture and enthrall the audience even in the last row, body expression was a must. Uday Shankar used to repeatedly tell his dancers that those sitting in the last few rows were his main audience, for they had spent whatever little they could afford from their meager income to come and watch him perform. But having said that, it must be noted that for Kartikeya, which was composed in Kathakali, by Guru Shankaran Nambudri, for Uday Shankar, the usage of mudras was pronounced. Shanti Bose opines that his own background in Kathakali, probably helped him achieve perfection in terms of the mudras used, when he was taught the item by Uday Shankar, and performed it under Uday Shankar’s aegis and subsequently. But apart from this one dance, the usage of mudras was very limited in Uday Shankar’s style. A huge unexplored gap stems from the fact that if Uday Shankar did not depend too much on the Natya Shastra, then, what was the basis of his dance form? Or was it a go as you like style without any basic grammar to provide the foundation for its construction? It may be argued, that the very basis of the word creative defies limitation. But while it defies limitation, does it not have a foundation? Does creative writing not have a basis in the basics of the structure of language? Does creativity and innovation in business not have a basis in any management guidelines or theories, does cinematic creativity not stem from a deep-rooted understanding of the tools and techniques of the art? Similarly, Uday Shankar’s form, although a creative form, did have its basics, on which the style was founded on and based on. He developed this slowly as he matured and by the time Almora was in place, these techniques were well in place and taught in the general class. This was brought forth at the discussions at the Uday Shankar Shatabdi Samaroh held between 2001 - 2002, organized across India in the cities of New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata, by Sangeet Natak Akademi, New Delhi. This researcher was fortunate enough to participate as a performer as well as a presenter in the celebrations held in New Delhi in 2001. Image 107: Cover of the souvenir of the centenary celebrations held in New Delhi in 2001. Courtesy, private collection of Shanti Bose Image 108: A page from the above souvenir. Shanti Bose presented Kartikeya and together with his troupe, Nrityangan, recreated Samanya Kshati. Courtesy, private collection of Shanti Bose The first basic attribute of the form was posture. According to Uday Shankar, the first thing that a dancer must know is how to stand. A slouching posture can never portray the beauty of a movement. Shanti Bose recollects the basic tenets of “chin up, chest out, stomach in” that had become a mantra for them when training in the style. Image 109: Shanti Bose demonstrating the basic “chin up, chest out, stomach in” posture at the centenary celebrations in Kolkata in 2002. Courtesy, private collection of Shanti Bose The next step was to prepare the body for dance. This preparation was necessary to help the dancer attain control over his body movements. Only once the dancer had achieved this control, could he present his dance with apparent ease and simplicity. For this purpose, Uday Shankar developed a whole series of exercises which would, with practice, enable the body move in easy, fluid movements. The exercises created by Uday Shankar involved exercising the limbs and various joints of the body. These exercises were the ones he taught at the General Class at Almora. Every student, no matter what subject he or she was pursuing at the Centre, as well as the troupe members attended this class.