CHAPTER 8

UDAY SHANKAR STYLE OF CREATIVE DANCE –

ITS IMPACT AND THE LEGACY

Uday Shankar’s social awareness and social responsibility was reflected in his compositions of Rhythm of Life, Labour and Machinery as well as Shankarscope. Rhythm of

Life portrayed the struggle of a young man who battles various adversities of life to emerge with new faith and hope for freedom. Labour and Machinery illustrated the problems faced by industrialized nations, the economic atrocities of capitalist societies, and how men and women mechanically pursue their daily lives. But in the end, the victory of truth, justice and humankind is inevitable. Many of the items of Shankarscope were also either a satirical or socio-political commentary on issues that plagued India in the late 60s and 70’s, as has been discussed in detail when describing the items in the previous chapters.1

As is also evident through his 1948 film Kalpana, not only did Uday Shankar showcase the dynamics of resurgent India as it came into being as a new nation-state, but the problems faced by modern India as well. The shift in his compositions from representing the mythology of India, to telling tales of the struggle of the newly independent nation, represents a shift in his dynamism as a creator, as well as the perception of India by the Orient. His tremendous ability to observe daily life and represent it through his dance makes him a visual chronicler of the life and times of the common man and therefore the history of the period.

1 From the souvenirs of Uday Shankar’s productions in the 1960s and 70s

Uday Shankar brought to Indian performing arts, a level of professionalism that had not existed before. Based on the experience of his association with the professionally managed dance troupe of Anna Pavlova, Uday Shankar brought together a team of dancers

‘The Uday Shankar Hindu Dancers and Musicians’ with the aim of professional stage performances. This was a direct shift from the traditional guru-shishya parampara2, of training in performing arts in India. The quest for perfection and the intensive and extensive dedication to achieve that perfection remained common however. Punctuality, professionalism in behavior within the troupe as well as when they were on tour, paying his artists for their time and effort, ensuring that his troupe had the best of comfort in terms of travel and stay while on tours – elevated the respect given to performers to a great extent.

With his troupe, not only in the formative years, but also subsequently, Uday

Shankar heralded another important social change. He brought the upper caste Brahmins and the Indian upper middle class and middle class on stage at a time when this was frowned upon.

With his foray into dance Uday Shankar therefore denounced the social stigma attached to the art form. His troupe initially consisted primarily of his family members. As he hailed from the

Brahmin family, it meant that most of his troupe members too were Brahmins, like him. He also brought on stage as dancers, Indian women, like his cousin Kanaklata and others like Zohra

Sehgal and her sister Uzra, Amala Nandi, as well as Ragini, Padmini and Lalitha. This was in direct contradiction to the traditional forms of dance where the norm was that men portrayed the roles of women, for example, in Kathakali, or the Gotipua tradition of Odissi, where young boys dressed as women would perform in the courtyards of the temples. He therefore

2 Guru-shishya parampara – the traditional teacher-student way of learning in India questioned the established social structures and hierarchy including the stereotypes attributed to the tradition of performing arts.

Through Uday Shankar, dance in India, found a new respectability. Men and women from respectable families, for whom performing on stage had been unthinkable, now came forward and started taking up dancing professionally.

Uday Shankar introduced India to a never before seen or utilized technology for stage craft. During the tours that the troupe undertook not only internationally, but in various parts of India, one of the challenges faced by them was the fact that the size of the stage varied from one auditorium to another. This implied that it would result in a change of position of the lights and dancers. As discussed in the previous chapter, given the perfectionist that Shankar was, he eliminated this problem through the use of a sheet that was laid out on stage before every performance. The positions of the dancers used to be marked on this sheet, so that even if the size of the stage differed, the dancers would always perform in their designated positions.

The lights were also fixed on stands which were placed in prefixed positions. During rehearsals, the dancers had to position themselves and mark their positions in order to ensure that they not only maintained their distances accurately, but were also aligned to the lights as required for different sequences.

Dimmers were also something that Uday Shankar brought to India as far as stage lighting was concerned; and the most interesting part is that whenever the performance was performed to recorded music, it was the musicians who handled the lights as they were the best attuned to the sequence and the music of the ballet being performed. This was the case with the productions of Samanya Kshati performed in India.

Shankarscope was a production which combined stage and screen together with illusionary effects. Uday Shankar felt, it was “highly developed technically which….will create a new channel for a great industry in this country.”3 According to Shanti Bose, his then Ballet

Master and Assistant Director for the production of Shankarscope, as far as the technical aspect was concerned, the merging of the screen characters with the same characters enacting live on stage was a major challenge in Shankarscope. It was achieved by slowly diminishing the size of the character on screen in the film, to the actual height of the person in real life. One of the first shows of its kind in India, the trend for combining audio-visual media and stage performance, which has become quite the norm in most prestigious events in performing arts, was established by Uday Shankar.

As discussed before, the last item of Shankarscope was the dance titled

Epilogue. The most striking aspect of this dance was its lighting. Uday Shankar introduced, for the first time in India, strobe lights or stroboscopic lamps. The lights could be adjusted to whatever tempo was required and according to the English daily, The Statesman, this “final dance with the light throwing flickering shadows on the backdrop looked like an exotic dream.”

This was augmented by the fact that strobe lights give the feel of freezing motion at rhythmic intervals. Quite clichéd now, they were nonetheless, in the early 70’s quite a path-breaking and innovative enterprise.

Therefore, the impact that Uday Shankar had during the time he lived and performed in, was immense. His dance form became a medium of narrative, telling the story

3 Souvenir: Shankarscope (1970) of the common man, thereby reflecting the socio-economic and political conditions of modern

India. In an age when the leaders of modern India were trying to unite India in their struggle for independence, Uday Shankar’s dance form contributed to this nationalistic endeavour by overcoming the provincial dimensions and being quintessentially Indian in nature. The other revolution that he brought about was in terms of form and content in Indian dance.

He moved away from the traditional use of mudras and facial expressions, as had been the focus of the classical form for centuries in India, to the use of body expression for emoting. He introduced new movements in dance and brought to India the concept of creative dance and ballet. Uday Shankar introduced India to a never before seen or utilized technology in stage craft in every aspect of performance. Under him, dance gained a new respectability and the social stigma attached to dancers was overcome. A new level of professionalism that had not existed before in performing arts was also achieved.

Even in the Hindi movies, Sachin Shankar carried forward Uday Shankar’s style through his choreography in films like Nagin (1954), Madhumati (1958) and Johny Mera Naam

(1970).4 Sachin Shankar put in a performance himself in the film Munimji (1955).5

However, despite Uday Shankar’s tremendous contribution to Indian dance and the impact that it had and continues to have, it is hardly acknowledged today. In the article titled “Who remembers Uday Shankar?”, Dr. Erdman writes, “Why, I asked myself, did no one talk of Shankar in India today? Wasn’t he the forerunner of India’s great dance renaissance in

4 https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1281193/ (Accessed April 28, 2019)

5http://tarunbosencinema.blogspot.com/2014/06/forgotten-melodies-part-1-my-favourite.html (Accessed April 28, 2019) the 1930s? Why did one of Delhi’s major presenters claim that her ballets owed nothing to

Shankar, when it was clear to me that they did?”6

Uday Shankar himself wrote, “After all this experience in the world of dancing, that dancing as beautiful as it is passes, dies with the disappearance of the interpreter. So, I created a new method which could be applied to any kind of dance to the world – and not only that this method can be used in schools and colleges without making students dancers. It may be called a new school of dancing altogether which I very strongly feel is going to stay.”7 Uday

Shankar had applied for funding to the Government of India under Indira Gandhi’s aegis for funding to make this work; but unfortunately, he was not granted the fund for it.

With regard to the question of significance of Uday Shankar on our life and times, though largely unacknowledged, it remains in very tangible forms. The space for creative dance forms, the influence of form and content, the fact that both men and women have taken up dance as a professional option in India, the technological innovations in performing arts, have all been possible due to this one man. Based on the kind of productions that he had witnessed, Shankar in an interview had said that, “The ballets I see in India are no doubt an extension of my work. I feel that strongly.”8 The sad part is that not only was his contribution unacknowledged by his fellow artists then, it remains unacknowledged till date.

6 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

7 Uday Shankar, “My Love for Dance,” Souvenir of Shankarscope (1970)

8 Mohan Khokar, His Dance His Life – A Portrait of Uday Shankar (New Delhi: Himalayan Books, 1983), 171

Image 111: A first day cover released by the Indian Postal Services in commemoration of the first death anniversary of Uday Shankar. Photograph courtesy, private collection of Shanti Bose.

Therefore, in terms of the legacy of Uday Shankar, and his impact on society as well as on performing arts is immense. As discussed, his role as the harbinger of social upliftment – in enabling the removal of social stigma to dance and dancers as well as the status performing arts to the respect that it demands; bringing forth women dancers on stage – including his own cousin, as well as his thought provoking productions on the plight of the marginalized communities in society cannot be overlooked. The professionalism that he brought to performing arts in terms of maintaining a professional troupe, punctuality, instilling soft skills in his troupe members as they would be representing India to the world, the way the programmes, accommodation and transport of the troupe was arranged, as well as in terms of the technology he used, was way ahead of its time. His performances not only herald the introduction of multi-media stage performances, but the impact that he has had on music and the dance forms of contemporary India, which has led to so many renowned artists to explore their creativity.