REGD. NO: KARENG/2009/29264 ISSN 0975 – 5810 ArtConnect

An IFA Publication An IFA Publication Volume 5, Number 1 January-June 2011 Volume 5 Number 1 January-June 2011

Contents Volume 5, Number 1 Rs.100 EDITORIAL Special Issue on the Performing Arts 3

PHYSICAL TEXT: CREATING THE AUTONOMOUS ACTOR Sankar Venkateswaran 6

DASTANGOI: CONJURING UP THE ANCIENT WIZARDS OF STORYTELLING Mahmood Farooqui 20 ArtConnect

THE GATI RESIDENCY: NURTURING NEW VOICES IN CHOREOGRAPHY Anusha Lall 32

THE RISALO: POETRY IN PERFORMANCE Shalini Panjabi 48

Reviews

BEAUTIFUL THING 1: EXPLORING GENDER AND GEOMETRIES January-June 2011 Parvathi Nayar 60

ALLADEEN AND DANCING ON GLASS: TWO WAYS OF LOOKING AT GLOBALITY Jisha Menon 74

India Foundation for the Arts ‘Apurva’ Ground Floor, No 259, 4th Cross Raj Mahal Vilas IInd Stage, IInd Block, Bangalore-560 094 Phone/Fax: 91- 80 - 2341 4681/82 Email: [email protected] www.indiaifa.org Contents

EDITORIAL 3

PHYSICAL TEXT: CREATING THE AUTONOMOUS ACTOR Sankar Venkateswaran 6

DASTANGOI: CONJURING UP THE ANCIENT WIZARDS OF STORYTELLING Mahmood Farooqui 20

THE GATI RESIDENCY: NURTURING NEW VOICES IN CHOREOGRAPHY Anusha Lall 32

THE RISALO: POETRY IN PERFORMANCE Shalini Panjabi 48

Reviews

BEAUTIFUL THING 1: EXPLORING GENDER AND GEOMETRIES Parvathi Nayar 60

ALLADEEN AND DANCING ON GLASS: TWO WAYS OF LOOKING AT GLOBALITY Jisha Menon 74 ArtConnect An IFA Publication Volume 5, Number 1 January-June 2011

Editor C.K. Meena

Design Mishta Roy

Printed by B Narahari, published by Anmol Vellani on behalf of India Foundation for the Arts and printed at Manipal Press Ltd., Press Corner, Tile Factory Road, Manipal, Udipi, Karnataka - 576 104 and published at India Foundation for the Arts, 'Apurva', Ground Floor, No 259, 4th Cross, Raj Mahal Vilas IInd Stage, IInd Block, Bangalore - 560 094. Editor - C.K. Meena

Photo and Text Credits Sankar Venkateswaran, Thyagarajan, Satoko Tsurudome, Vinayan, Mahmood Farooqui, Anusha Lall, Rajyashree Ramamurthi, Shilpika Bordoloi, Amitesh Grover, Desmond Roberts, Shalini Panjabi, Parvathi Nayar, Jirka Jansch, Sara, Jisha Menon, Virginia Rodrigues

Cover Image Micari in Sahyande Makan — The Elephant Project, a Theatre Roots & Wings production. Photograph by Thyagarajan.

All efforts have been made to contact and receive permission from all copyright holders. Any source not acknowledged will be credited in subsequent issues. Editorial

This issue is coming out one month earlier than scheduled, to coincide with IFA’s second New Performance Festival from 18 to 21 November 2010 in Kolkata. It is the second such festival (the first was in Bangalore in 2008) featuring performances that have been developed with support from IFA. Fittingly, therefore, performance is the theme of this issue.

IFA part-funded a residency for emerging choreographers, the Gati Summer Dance Residency 2010, run by the Gati Forum in New Delhi. The Forum’s Director, Anusha Lall, gives us an overview of this residency, which offers dancers a unique opportunity to create and stage their own choreographic works with guidance from mentors, who help them develop a critical eye towards their own work. We also have reflections on the residency, as two residents and a mentor narrate the highlights of their ten-week experience.

A New Performance grant from IFA launched theatre professional Sankar Venkateswaran on a journey to map contemporary acting, actor training and theatre-making in India. In this issue he describes how, by using physical text as a tool to create autonomous actors, he has tried to outline an alternative approach to contemporary theatre making in India. Another grant partially supported dancer/choreographer Padmini Chettur to develop a collaborative performance piece, Beautiful Thing 1, reviewed here by Parvathi Nayar. Also in the Review section is Jisha Menon’s critique of Ram Ganesh Kamatham’s play Dancing on Glass, which recently toured Mumbai and New Delhi. 3

Travelling from the new to the old, Mahmood Farooqui has been exploring Dastangoi, the sixteenth century performed art of storytelling, which migrated here from Persia. He has been researching, in particular, the countless fantastic tales woven around the Arab warrior Amir Hamza, which acquired distinctly Indic colours in the eighteenth century. An IFA grant helped Farooqui breathe new life into the art form, and his training workshops for dastangos (tellers of epics) are an attempt to recapture some of that lost glory. Here, he narrates the history of Dastangoi and talks of plans to extend its ambit by creating contemporary texts.

Meanwhile, another storytelling tradition, an intertwining of the oral and the written, is alive and well in the Sindhi belt, the swathe of land that stretches from Baluchistan all the way down to Kachchh. Shah Abdul Latif’s Risalo, a vast collection of verses that tell stories about the region and the people of Sindh, continues to be recited, read and sung 300 years after they were composed. IFA grantee Shalini Punjabi, who travelled across western Rajasthan and Kachchh to trace the journey of the Risalo, found that the episodic and fragmentary nature of the stories allowed for a multitude of performance forms.

Journeys appear to mark this issue: journeys virtual and physical; inward journeys as well as journeys that retrace other journeys made hundreds of years ago.

C.K. Meena [email protected] Contributors

Sankar Venkateswaran graduated from Calicut University’s School of Drama & Fine Arts with a first rank (2002) and completed intensive training at the Theatre Training and Research Programme, Singapore (2006). Sankar has undergone practical ‘immersions’ in four major Asian traditional theatre forms—Noh, Kudiyattom, Beijing opera and Wayang Wong—as well as Stanislavskian and post-Stanislavskian acting methodologies, and training in voice, speech, movement, theatre-making, Taiji and para-theatre. In 2007 he founded Theatre Roots & Wings of which he is currently the artistic director. Sankar works as a dramaturge as well as a producer, director, actor and music composer. He teaches acting and has been holding theatre-making workshops, one of which he was invited to conduct in Japan by Ku Na’uka Theatre Company in 2002. 4 Mahmood Farooqui studied history at St Stephen’s College, New Delhi and at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. He has been a journalist and a newspaper columnist and over the last few years, under the guidance of the renowned Urdu scholar S.R. Faruqi, has worked to effect a major revival of Dastangoi, the lost art of Urdu storytelling that dates back to the sixteenth century. He is the author of Besieged: Voices from Delhi 1957 (Penguin) and Habib Tanvir’s Autobiography (Viking), and has worked as a researcher with William Dalrymple on The Last Mughal. He is the co-director of the recently released Hindi feature film Peepli Live, and lives in Delhi with his wife Anusha Rizvi.

Anusha Lall is director and founder member of the Gati Dance Forum, a Delhi- based organisation that works to promote artists in the field of contemporary Indian dance. Her interest in dance spans choreography, performance, teaching and research. Some of her recent choreographic works are Sambodhan, Vyuti and Tilt. Anusha collaborates with artists from other disciplines such as theatre, video, sculpture and digital art, and has worked with leading choreographers and theatre directors from around the world. She has also created dance and digital art installations that challenge traditional notions of viewing dance and aim to subvert the relationship between the dancer and the spectator. Her installations Inside In and Homes for the Absent have been exhibited at Spring Dance, Netherlands, and Apeejay Gallery and Khoj, New Delhi.

Shalini Panjabi is an independent researcher based in Bangalore. She did her PhD in Sociology from the Delhi School of Economics on aspects of private education in India, and has received a Postdoctoral Research Award from the Charles Wallace Trust. Her research interests are also in the larger areas of orality, literacy and cultural heritage. One of her field sites has been Kashmir, where the focus has been on the complex issues that arise from conservation in a conflict situation. Her current work, funded by a grant from the IFA, is on Sindhi oral narratives in western Rajasthan and Kachchh.

Parvathi Nayar is a visual artist with a drawing and painting practice. Her thought-provoking work explores narratives of our world in unusual ways, and invites viewers to re-examine preconceptions. As a writer, she is a cultural 5 commentator covering areas that include film, theatre and contemporary dance. Parvathi received her Masters in Fine Art from Central St Martins College of Art and Design, London on a Chevening scholarship. In 2007 she was the only artist invited to present an installation by ArtSingapore, Singapore’s national art fair. She has exhibited widely in India and abroad, and her works have been collected by institutions such as the Singapore Art Museum, The Sotheby’s Art Institute and Deutsche Bank.

Jisha Menon is currently Assistant Professor of Drama at Stanford University. She completed her Masters in English at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and her PhD in Drama at Stanford University. She served as Assistant Professor of English at University of British Columbia, Vancouver for four years. She is currently working on a book, The Performance of Nationalism: India, Pakistan and the Memory of Partition. She is also co-editor, with Patrick Anderson, of a volume of essays, Violence Performed: Local Roots and Global Routes of Conflict (Palgrave- Macmillan Press) that explores the coimbrication of violence, performance, and modernity in a variety of geopolitical spaces. Micari in Sahyande Makan — The Elephant Project. Photograph by Thyagarajan. Physical Text: Creating the Autonomous Actor

By Sankar Venkateswaran

An actor who is encouraged to become autonomous and trained to become a collaborator in the creative process can enrich the theatrical experience, feels Sankar Venkateswaran. Using physical text as a tool for actor training, and techniques drawn from tradition, he has attempted to create an alternative approach to doing contemporary theatre in India. ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 5, Number 1

n early 2007, I started work on authorship/authority over their creating a methodology for actor creations. Such a rehearsal set-up, I Itraining and theatre making, thought, would empower the aimed at revitalising the experimental individual, theatre, and eventually, spirit of contemporary Indian theatre. society itself. The origin of, and my Towards this, I wanted to start on a inspiration for, this idea on autonomy sequential and logical training process came from traditional theatres. that would enable contemporary actors to participate in the creative The influence of the Natyasastra process with a fair degree of artistic in practices ranging from Odissi to autonomy. The aim was to tap into the Kathakali shows us that there has entire expressive potential of the actor been a unified language to talk about and get her to commit fully to the acting and its aesthetics in the substance of the act. I wanted my subcontinent for hundreds of years. actors to claim their But not enough literature is available on contemporary acting, as there isn’t a serious discourse on it, or an 8 accurate vocabulary to discuss and analyse it, on a pan-Indian level. Compare this with the bulk of knowledge on acting that we can access from texts such as the Natyasastra or the Abhinayadarpanam.

There are a few institutions and drama schools where acting is taught. There are two streams that inform the fundamental training. One is based on the Stanislavskian or life-like- acting paradigm, which extends to the dramaturgies of Shakespeare, Greek plays, Brecht, Beckett and so

Mandakini Goswami and Prabhath Bhaskaran in Quick Death. Photograph by Thyagarajan. Sankar Venkateswaran-The Autonomous Actor on. The other stream draws on non- respect the form and to learn it in realistic, larger-than-life-like and accurate and minute detail from a abstract paradigms, sometimes master, who gives the actor the independently, sometimes informed by ‘blocking’ in the initial stage of her the Natyasastra and/or certain training. The second phase starts from regional or folk practices. There are the moment when the actor becomes also a few director-led theatre groups free of technique. This happens and labs scattered across India that through prolonged practice. The actor undertake actor training seriously and now embodies a new ‘spontaneity’ and pursue their own individual styles. starts to move with a ‘second nature’. Here the actor is trained to work The final phase refers to the moment under a director, and therefore limited when the actor intentionally, and with to working in the director’s style. profound artistic goals in mind, moves away from the form. And to this end, In institutions as well as in she has to re-model the forms that director-led groups, actors are not in modelled her. This departure from charge of the process of creation. The form is the exact moment when the directors may or may not understand actor begins to express her own 9 the inspirational needs of the actors artistry, gain autonomy over the and may fail to articulate what they substance of the act. She no longer want from them. Often, the actor’s follows the blocking, moves, gestures judgments, perceptions, and and vocalisations taught to her but understanding of the interiority of the keeps them as references and departs actions are ruled by the director’s from them to create new actions over interpretation. which she enjoys total authorship.

Contrasting processes In contrast, the contemporary actor starts in a creative environment, A major difference between the generally acquainting herself with the processes of a contemporary actor and work through readings and those of a traditional actor is in the improvisations and by applying an progression that leads to a analytical process to the substance of performance. A traditional actor’s the act. This is the first phase. In the work can be broadly classified into second phase, the director harnesses three phases. The first phase is to her improvisations to form part of the ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 5, Number 1

larger dramaturgy. Through repetition approach to play directing, acting, and familiarity, the actor slowly starts actor training and theatre making. I to acquire a ‘second nature’ over her wanted to re-emphasise the centrality actions. The final phase is the of acting in the creative process of the ‘blocking’ or ‘blueprinting’ or ‘plotting’. contemporary actor, working with my As the day of the performance actors as collaborators and approaches, the actor is given autonomous creators. Actor autonomy structures based on what she has is not a form of irreverence towards created; scenes are modelled by the the director but a disciplined process author, director or dramaturge, and through which the actor can become executed by the actor in resonance truly empowered and, going beyond with the director’s ‘creative will’. being a mere duplicator of established cultures, become an innovator of new It was based on this observation and relevant creations. that I started to create an alternative

10

Sunil Kumar in Sahyande Makan — The Elephant Project. Photograph by Satoko Tsurudome. Sankar Venkateswaran in Sahyande Makan — The Elephant Project. Photograph by Satoko Tsurudome. ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 5, Number 1

Now, what makes it possible for Station become extremely relevant to the traditional actor to achieve such the training process. They are ‘physical autonomy? The Kudiyattom actor’s texts’, which are standalone bodies of work is based on Sanskrit plays. work, while acting manuals are Besides using the prescribed text, the supplementary to the dramatic texts. actors closely follow the acting manual Since physical texts are written along (Aattaprakaram) written for the the lines of the acting manual, they performance. Much of the training serve a purpose in contemporary and rehearsal process is devoted to theatre similar to that of acting embodying these acting manuals in manuals in traditional theatre. meticulous detail. The Noh actors also have their acting manuals (Katatsuke) A pre-written physical text in addition to the dramatic texts. contains written transcriptions of actions. These transcriptions work as An acting manual may consist of pre-determined forms and help the drawings, detailed written descriptions contemporary actor to bypass the of the physical actions and their difficulty of starting with a form, thus 12 qualifications, a unique layout allowing her to shape her process as a indicating stage directions, notes on traditional actor would, but within the music and choreography, and so framework of contemporary work. on. These are passed on from teacher Such a text instructs an actor to be to student within the framework of specific, structured, and yet traditional training. They are not spontaneous, and facilitates her in considered as independent texts, but taking charge of the creative process. as supplements to dramatic literature; A physical text is an ideal tool for they operate as a set of guidelines with actor training. It leads the actor to which the actors can kick-start the express with her whole body and, in process. the case of my exploration with Quick Death, promotes actor autonomy and The contemporary actor seldom encourages representational acting and gets to follow an acting manual, as mimesis. Moreover, it is an invaluable there usually isn’t one. Therefore, texts teaching aid in the early stages of actor such as Richard Murphet’s Quick training as it provides the actor with a Death, Samuel Beckett’s Act Without strong foundation, even as it rescues Words and Ota Shogo’s The Water her from the challenges of voice work Sankar Venkateswaran-The Autonomous Actor and the vulnerabilities of early, Energy, Movement as a whole, Feeling unprepared emotional exposure. of the Form, Slowness, Stillness, Swiftness, Opposition, Radiation, Journey begins Transformation, and Feeling of the Beauty. These exercises did not have I was not as clear about these any emotional content but consisted concepts in 2007, when I applied for entirely of physical attributes that the support from IFA. After spending actors had to develop in training sleepless nights drafting and redrafting sessions and rehearsals. Later, they my proposal, I was finally awarded a were constantly reminded to apply production grant. In the heat of a these fundaments to the actions they Delhi summer, ensconced in a created and embodied in the building virtually sealed in glass, with performance text. no air-conditioners or ventilators, I started rehearsing Quick Death with During rehearsals, I insisted that Mandakini Goswami, Manoj Mathai, the actors wear costumes (three-piece Prabhath Bhaskaran, Vinu Joseph, suit, trench coat, hat, shoes, etc) when Sandeep Jayaraj, Shymon Chelad, we did scene work, despite the heat 13 Ranjith Raman and Satoko and lack of ventilation. A few basic Tsurudome. ground rules for acting were set and I insisted on their being followed in It was so hot that often, unable rehearsals. Always, five aspects must to rehearse on the floor, we sat with a be connected: a new breath, a new scale model of the set and chess pawns thought, a new focus for the eye, a to evolve the choreography. I put new body posture, and a new pitch together the music, and the actors (where the actors utter text). All started looking at their actions in actions are phrased in relation to the relation to the music and the space. breath. An action must have a Early mornings, before the sun came beginning, middle and an end. An out, we regularly practised a regimen action must always begin between an of exercises that I created to nurture in-breath and an out-breath or vice- the following aspects of the actor: versa. Actors must work off each Posture, Alignment, Ease and other, that is, more importance should Relaxation, Readiness, Weight, be given to reacting than to acting, or Balance, Grounding, Awareness, in other words, not ‘doing’ but ‘allowing ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 5, Number 1

to be done to’. After a few rehearsals, 5 December 2007 we opened the with such rigid physical structures in (initially 60-minute) show in New place, I found out that as soon as we Delhi. started rehearsing, a synchronicity in breathing happened between the Theatre of the Mind actors. Theatre Roots & Wings has This was a good sign—a very produced two plays in the last four good sign, actually, because I was keen years. We have earned a reputation for on the expressive potentials of the creating unique and powerful pieces of mind, and the bringing together of the theatre, which rely on the sheer power minds, imaginations and impulses of of the presence of the actor, live the actors, author and audiences. action, music and innovative staging. Breath is the door to mind. This theatre is full of ephemerals, unique to the nature of the mind. The By 30 June 2007 we had mind, though physiologically invisible something close to a work-in-progress. and psychologically unconscious, 14 I worked on the piece further, and on manifests in the form of profound

Prabhath Bhaskaran in Quick Death. Photograph by Thyagarajan. Sankar Venkateswaran-The Autonomous Actor

Yuka Tsuchida as Ashwathama, Nozomi Takeuchi as Balarama, Sakie Kishi as Dhritarashtra and Ayano Watai as Gandhari in Urubhangam. Photograph by Satoko Tsurudome. ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 5, Number 1

experiences for the audiences to feel, minds/imaginations in and through relish, ponder, solve and sometimes their bodies. wonder at. Here, the mind makes itself present in space and through As for my directorial approach, I time, charging space, dilating time, and am only concerned with the ‘externals’ engaging anyone who steps into the of the actions that the actors create; periphery of its presence. that is, I have never attempted to dictate anything related to the This is theatre of the mind. interiority of the actions, or discuss There are a number of minds or anything related to the psychology or imaginations operating in a theatrical emotionality of the character. This is experience. Moments of delightful an invitation for the actor to invest her theatricality erupt only when the creative capital in the process. She is minds of the author, the actor, the invited to invest her own imagination character and the audience harmonise. in the performance, which is entirely Here, what is in the poet’s mind is free of a director’s prejudice. The reflected in the audience’s mind. The actors find their own inner 16 vibrations in the audience’s mind affect justifications and reasons for their the character’s states of beings and actions and parts. Each has a different resonate in the actor’s mind. The set of justifications for her part, which boundaries between the minds of the can be different from that of her author, actor, character and audience fellow actors, of the playwright, of dissolve and form one mind, one mine, and of the audience. consciousness. Theatre works at its best in such synchronicities. When directing a play I usually leave it to the actors to interpret the Now, how do I personify the mind in text. I might work with them to evolve space? And what is the process? their interpretations, but I never There are two things worth impose my interpretations on them. mentioning here: my directorial As a director, I work on the approach in getting the audience and physicality, on discovering the tempo, the actors to actively invest their rhythm, orientation and the various minds/imaginations in the psychophysical qualifications that are performance, and the training that essential to the ‘watchability’ of the allows the actors to express their actor. My major task in rehearsals is Sankar Venkateswaran-The Autonomous Actor calling the shots and building up the through discipline. This process rhythm of the score together with the demands of an actor a balance performers and the technical artists, between technique and inspiration, thus allowing the actor to have total control and release, containment and authority over the ‘interiority’. This freedom, consciousness and results in powerful actions that unconsciousness. resonate with a multiplicity of interpretations/meanings. And since As for the training part, I direct the actions are free of didactic actors to train their bodies and voices information and built-in meanings in order to express their imagination. imposed by me, the audiences are also After all, the mind of a character is summoned to invest their seen on stage only through the body imaginations for the justifications that of the actor. My training for actors they seek while watching the consists of structures that are placed performance. sequentially, beginning at the level of least intricacy and going up the scale The exploration of an actor is over a period of time. When it comes directed towards identifying and to training a contemporary actor in 17 executing what is ‘necessary’ in a such a sequential manner, some performative moment (with respect to questions regarding the beginning and the text). Ideally speaking, until the middle arise. The end is more or less actor ‘matures’ enough to claim total clear: we need actors skilled in their authority over the substance of the craft, autonomous in their art. But act, a wink of an eye or a shift in the where do we begin and how do we focus would be seen as ‘unnecessary’ if proceed? Acting is largely a corporal it is not written in the text; this is an task and the strength of empirical invitation for an actor to identify and knowledge in acting is undeniable. refrain from executing what is Hence an ideal starting point would ‘unnecessary’ till she ‘matures’ and feels be the body itself. the creative urge and spirit that will then transform the ‘unnecessary’ into Training should start with the the ‘necessary’. The actor might find body because it is the most tangible the whole process restrictive in the aspect of the human organism. Once early stages, only to discover freedom, the student actor completes a fair at a later stage, which is achieved degree of training she starts on her ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 5, Number 1

voice work, followed by training in What I have outlined is the tip speech and singing. With a well- of an iceberg. With this process I work trained body, voice, speech and singing on training the creativity and faculties, the actor must explore the imagination of the actors and provide fascinating, subtle, complex, and them with challenging dramaturgies to profound landscape of the mind. deal with. This results in a closely Initially, the training should be done woven, progressively constructed on the individual expressive faculties, training structure that links theory, and during a theatre making and training, theatre making and acting performance creation practice, the and the dramaturgy of a society integrated expressive faculties should through a profound connection. It has be explored. These days, I am careful its starting point at a basic level of not to bring existing cultural forms to intricacy and progresses steadily and my rehearsal space during training logically, aiming to develop creativity, sessions. I urge my actors to look technique and autonomy for the actor. beneath the layers of culture to With this training, the actor will be represent the essential human truth so well equipped to face challenges when 18 that the most primal image of the she journeys through genres and human being manifests itself in space. performance styles.

Scene from Quick Death. Photograph by Satoko Tsurudome. Sankar Venkateswaran-The Autonomous Actor

The potential of this working Over the last three years, my methodology is ratified in my own study and practice in this productions. Now, in 2010, when I direction as a theatre maker has given review my journey, I see that the birth to four distinctly different training process has unleashed the productions: Quick Death, Sahyande creativity and imagination of Makan – The Elephant Project (based numerous actors in India and a few in on V. Sreedhara Menon’s text), Japan, inspiring them to create original (Bhasa’s) Urubhangam and The Water work that is relevant to theatre, to Station. Since 2007, Quick Death has society, and to themselves as grown considerably shorter and individuals. So far, I have taught quicker. Now in 2010, the play is little thirteen workshops all over India since more than 35 minutes long, with no the premiere of Quick Death, and edits. As critic Sadanand Menon shared various segments of my wrote: “Quick Death has lesser concept of the autonomous actor with ingredients than a Molotov Cocktail. more than 140 acting students in Yet, the result is spontaneous India and twenty-five students in combustion. And the audience was left Japan. punch-drunk.” 19

Scene from Quick Death. Photograph by Vinayan. Dastangoi: Conjuring up the Ancient Wizards of Storytelling

All photographs show Mahmood Farooqui and Danish Husain performing Dastangoi. Writer, scholar and performer Mahmood Farooqui has been engaged with Dastangoi, the sixteenth century performed art of storytelling in Urdu, since 2004. His work has essentially involved writing on and performing from the longest fictional narrative of modern India, the Dastan-e Amir Hamza. In an email interview, Farooqui describes the history of Dastangoi and his ambitious attempts to rekindle interest in the genre. ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 5, Number 1

he word Dastangoi is a make clear, the practice of Dastangoi compound of two Persian required an exceptional command over Twords dastan and goi, which rhetoric, delivery, mimicry, together mean ‘to tell a dastan’. ventriloquism and spontaneous Dastans were epics, which were composition. Moreover, Dastangoi was recited or read aloud, telling tales of one feature of an oral/performative adventure, magic and warfare. The culture where the public arena was the hero’s adventures through new worlds first and perhaps the most natural site and horizons could sometimes parallel of performance. Contortionists, the mystic quest, and at other times magicians, soothsayers, fakirs, narrate a purely profane tale. madaris, animal fights, mushairas and Dastangos were specialised tellers of sundry other activities provided a dastans. prismatic context in which dastans were composed and performed. The As anecdotes from Mir Baqar cleverness of the dastango lay in Ali, the last famous dastango of India, commanding the audience’s attention at all times and demanded a range of 22 acting and performing skills.

The most prominent dastan was the Dastan-e Amir Hamza, which narrated the life and adventures of Amir Hamza whose travels take him through different realms where he encounters fairies, djinns and other supernatural beings. By the sixteenth century, versions of Hamza’s story had begun to circulate in India, prompting Emperor Akbar to commission the Hamzanama. For the next two centuries, different Persian versions of the Hamza story circulated in India. Dastangoi was sufficiently entrenched in most parts of northern India with the dastangos getting prominent Mahmood Farooqui - Dastangoi mention in ethnographic accounts of to create and adapt performances from the time. By the mid-nineteenth the traditional texts. Working with century, not only did the Hamza story two male performers and a female begin to acquire greater currency in narrator, he has done over 130 shows print but the conventions of dastans in different spaces and cities in India were also beginning to influence and abroad. productions of modern Urdu prose. Here, Farooqui speaks of his Over time the Dastan-e Amir journey into the wonderland of Hamza has receded from public Dastangoi, which he calls “a near consciousness—both from the literary perfect marriage between literature canon and from the sphere of the and performance”. performing arts. Mahmood Farooqui began his tryst with the Dastangoi ArtConnect: Could you tell us tradition in August 2004 while he was about the history of Dastangoi? What is on a Sarai fellowship collecting its current status in India? material for a documentary film he intended to make. He soon, however, Mahmood Farooqui: Dastan-e 23 began to explore the possibility of Amir Hamza is the name of a performing the text. Though he knew tradition—a tradition of telling stories that traditional Dastangoi around the life and adventures of an performance was restricted to a single Arab warrior called Amir Hamza. It performer, he nonetheless began to becomes a kind of uber text into which work with other actors. all sorts of other stories begin to flow. The tradition goes back roughly to the Farooqui’s overarching plan is to eighth century, or perhaps even earlier train more dastangos, create new depending on whom you believe, but it dastans and perform to newer began to flower only when it was audiences. He has conducted transferred from Arabic to Persian. For workshops with aspiring performers about five centuries Persian was a and given them basic training and cosmopolitan language spoken all over Hindi transliteration of the texts to the Asiatic world, like Arabic or Latin begin their practice. From these before it, so it had reach, it had workshops he has selected performers universality and it had a great tradition who will further collaborate with him of poetry, epics and stories.

Mahmood Farooqui - Dastangoi

From about the twelfth century then there were native dastangos who onwards the tales of this Arab warrior were writing/performing newer began to spread in other parts of the dastans that differed from the Hamza world such as Georgia, Indonesia, tradition, which was still the most Bosnia and Bengal, although it is popular and predominant. The difficult for us today to trace its exact relatively simpler Hamza story, a tale genealogy and textual history. of adventures, supernatural beings and battles, was mainly restricted to There is a record of it being warfare and romance. Razm (war) and present in India, in a Deccan court, bazm (poetry/romance/drinking) are brought here by an Irani storyteller the staples of most epics, poetic or called Haji Qissakhvan Hamadani. otherwise, such as the Odyssey, Qissakhvan means storyteller, so Shahnamah, and medieval already, in the sixteenth century, Hindavi/Sufi romances such as storytellers were separate Jayasi’s Padmavat. Mir Taqi Khyal in artists/writers/performers and were Delhi wrote an eighteen-volume given patronage and a high position in dastan called Bostan-e Khyal. This and the court. the Hamza story were by then already 25 acquiring very distinctly Indic colours. Then there was the Hamzanama by Emperor Akbar in the sixteenth It was when Khyal and other century. We know he was very fond of Indian storytellers brought sorcerers listening to these stories and sometimes and the magnificent worlds they narrated them too. The Hamzanama is created through their magical effect the name of the illustrations, really big and affect, the Tilisms and the ones, about 1,200 of them, which tricksters who are shrewd and crafty Akbar commissioned. About 100 jokers, that these two Indian images survive but we have not been peculiarities began to dominate most able to trace the actual text or oral other aspects in Indian narrations of version of the Hamza dastans they the Hamza epic. were based on. It is a cyclical, formulaic story It is only in the eighteenth with changing principal characters and century that we began to get versions, very similar episodes, encounters and aspects or elements of it in Urdu. By incidents, each of which receive a new ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 5, Number 1

twist, a new colour every time it is It was the Indian print retold. It is up to the ingenuity of the revolution, beginning with Fort teller, the dastango, to create the new William College Calcutta in the early out of the old, and therefore he nineteenth century, which provided a improvises freely. Hamza fights Laqa, new commercial platform to the Laqa is helped by Afrasiab, Amar goes Dastan-e Amir Hamza. The Naval to his kingdom the Tilism-e Kishore Press, one of the largest, most Hoshruba to curb him, and now you successful printing ventures in human have the basic storyline. Sorcerers will history (recently chronicled by come and go, they will be seduced or German scholar Ulrike Stark in her killed or imprisoned, new things will monograph The Empire of Books) was happen and the story will go on and simultaneously printing stories in on, potentially forever. There are Hindi, Urdu, Farsi, Bengali, Sanskrit countless Ayyaars and sorcerers; there and other languages. Religious texts, are grocers, merchants, sepoys, poetry, textbooks, stories, epics, Parsi soldiers, menial workers, wives, theatre songbooks, everything was daughters... The bad must suffer, the accepted as long as it sold. 26 good must prosper, and in between the two you can slip in anything you And so it was that between wish. 1880 and 1910 roughly, a group of six or seven dastangos, mainly Jah, Qamar Thus the Dastan-e Amir Hamza and Tasadduq Husain, created this finally took shape in the early magnificent epic, the Dastan-e Amir nineteenth century. But it was still a Hamza, in forty-six volumes, drawing mainly oral tradition; people told or on older traditions and their own embellished stories that they had experience as professional tellers. heard from others. Some, notably at (Before that, the one-volume Hamza Rampur court, began to write, and story, with affinities to the Persian carve newer and more elaborate version known outside India, had versions too. So there were people already sold in multiple editions since writing and people telling. Whether the 1850s.) And those forty-six the audience was growing or volumes are an amazing print success diminishing is something we do not story, reprinted several times till as late know. We also don’t know how the as the 1930s. It is a unique instance of performance was changing as a result. an oral form of performance finding Mahmood Farooqui - Dastangoi such huge success in printed form. twenty years of study he has produced a three-volume review of the epic (the But there are no known fourth is in progress). He drew my dastangos left in India. Our work is attention to someone called Osama the only thing that there is, and really, Khalidi who wanted to make a it is too poor, compared to the documentary about it. That’s when I wizardry of the ancients. read his three-volume study and learnt about the tradition. AC: Your journey with Dastangoi —when and how did it begin, and who But it took five years of talking, showed you the way? thinking and freelancing before I got a fellowship at Sarai to research and MF: I got interested in the document the tradition. It was the Dastan-e Amir Hamza only because of encouragement I received there that the sterling work done by the great enthused me greatly. Then, by chance, Urdu critic S.R. Faruqi. He has I met the then director of India painstakingly collected all forty-six International Centre (IIC) P.C. Sen volumes, perhaps the only such through his wife Binoo Sen. I had 27 collection in the world now. After known them long and they have been

Photograph by Abhinandita Mathur. Photograph by Abhinandita Mathur. Mahmood Farooqui - Dastangoi distinguished bureaucrats, very the bane of theatre practice in India. encouraging of my artistic awaragardi (wanderings) over the years, and they AC: An intriguing observation suggested a lecture demonstration. So you have made is that there was a I had a space, I had a text and when I dialogue between Dastangoi and Parsi actually read the dastan called the theatre, and also, that Dastangoi Tilism-e Hoshruba (which is one long influenced mainstream Hindi cinema. chapter, in eight volumes, of the longer Dastan-e Amir Hamza) I felt that the M.F: This is a hunch; it needs best way to put it across was to read it research and elaboration. Both out or recite it. Dastangoi and Parsi theatre are part of the print revolution. In the 1870s and Over a couple of months then I 1880s, Parsi theatre songbooks were roped in another actor and an old selling for an anna or two annas and friend, Himanshu Tyagi, to present were hugely popular. In the same two stories from the tradition, under period, in Lucknow, Delhi, Rampur the guidance of Faruqi-Saheb. We did and other places, dastangos were it for a lark, but the first show, at IIC reciting their stories in public spaces 29 on 5 May 2005, was so successful and such as the steps of the Jama Masjid the stories seemed so alive, so current or the main square of Lucknow. So and so laden with the ability to they shared spaces and presumably entertain people in the contemporary audiences. In dastans you can hear moment that it would have been dialogue resembling that found in stupid not to seek more wah-wahs! Parsi theatre—rhyming and After all, what else does a performer bombastic. Dastans have a lot of want? poetry and so does Parsi theatre, which has a lot of singing. The I have been involved with influence of Parsi theatre on Hindi theatre at school, college and later as cinema, especially since the advent of well. I was keenly interested in the talkies, has been well documented. modern Indian history and Urdu literature, and dastans brought the So there are connections in two together. At the same time it took content, performance and personnel; away all dependence on producers, we need to research and trace them. money, space and audience, which is The problem is that so far we mostly ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 5, Number 1

have a textual history of the Dastan-e AC: Your ambitious project of Amir Hamza, not a history of the expanding and extending the ambit of performance. There was obviously a Dastangoi—the dastango workshops, the lot going on in Indian cities in the creation of new texts and audiences— nineteenth century—spectacles, could you tell us about it? tableaus, bhands, stories from the life of Lord Krishna, Ramayana M.F: This is ongoing work. I recitations, Urdu poetry at mushairas, innovated on the little we know about Shia performative dirges called the performance part of Dastangoi marsiyas… We must learn about them and brought in two performers; it before we can speak authoritatively breaks the monotony and creates more about the performative aspects of engagement and fun, for the tellers Dastangoi. It is a mammoth research and the listeners. project. But for the moment I am happy to concentrate on performance The workshops have been good. and building an audience. I have already had about ten more people performing new shows. Our 30 Mahmood Farooqui - Dastangoi work right now is not about am trying to keep a bunch of people improvised storytelling; we are ready. working in a tradition, and with texts, treating it like any other theatre To transform our work from exercise—take the text, memorise it, being a show to being a genre takes understand it and start narrating/ time. But it will happen. We already performing/reciting/enacting it, and know that it is not important for me the rest will be worked out in to perform; Rana Senger, Sheikh rehearsal. Usman, Rajesh Kumar, Rasika Dugal, Manu Dhingra, Arti Jain and the new We have content that can trainees can regale audiences just as entertain the highbrow and the well. That is a huge step and a great lowbrow; we have a form that can be relief for me. Now the onus is also on moulded to any space, so long as them to take the form forward. people can hear us and see us. Similarly we will get more performers Obviously, we must take it out of the who can tell more and newer stories. hallowed spaces of theatre (with their discipline, decorum, bourgeois About creating new content for 31 conventions and mandatory silences) Dastangoi, we have a performance and put it back in the bazaar and see form, and in that form we can tell how the present-day bazaars cope anything we want, however we want: with this. That takes many more the partition of India, the history of tellers and a much greater familiarity, slavery, the decline of Urdu, the on the audience’s part, with our form Rajnikanth phenomenon... it depends and our tradition. on our knowledge, our command over the language, our ability to engage We must first inform the with and regale the audience. The audience as to what this is, where it universe is our language and every comes from, what they must expect single word we use is a narrative, from our performance and how they possibly also a story, probably only a should react; we must then explain the story. We, our lives, our histories, our content and the context of the story. literatures, our music, these are all Once awareness spreads, repeat stories which, in one viewing, end in a audiences will come in and the whole split second, just like that. game plan will change. Meanwhile I

The Gati Residency:

Nurturing New Voices in Choreography

By Anusha Lall

Contemporary dance practice in India has stagnated because we have failed to address choreography as a critical component of dance pedagogy, says Anusha Lall, Director, The Gati Dance Forum, New Delhi. Since there is virtually no organised support for dance creation in the country, The Gati Summer Dance Residency fills this gap by providing a reflective space for the dancer to forge a personal voice.

Rajyashree Ramamurthi in her performance piece In the Light of Irom Sharmila. Photograph by Desmond Roberts. ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 5, Number 1

he burgeoning demand in the dynamic past, creative, inquiry-driven last decade for dance dance practice tends to be scattered, Tperformances with new isolated and often astonishingly themes and in new contexts has seen rudimentary. And this in spite of the dancers in India experiment with the inheritance of a physical culture of movement forms they have learnt in unimaginable richness, diversity and different ways. Traditional depth. vocabularies have been employed to express contemporary and socially The reason for this sorry state of relevant themes, solo forms have been affairs is hardly a mystery. Our failure injected with the dynamics of group to consolidate, transmit and build on movement to fill larger and more the body of work done by our spectacular performance venues, and predecessors is exacerbated by the classical forms have been set to exotic virtual absence of systems that enable music from unfamiliar genres. While and support dancers to experiment some of these initiatives are successful, and develop their own creative voice. most of them fail to reach their Moreover, and this to my mind is our 34 potential. Often superficial in their gravest shortcoming, we have failed to engagement with the new elements seriously address Choreography, or the that they attempt to incorporate, they art of dance making, as an independent expose a lack of clarity, rigour and discipline in existing dance curriculums. imagination. Choreography is the set of tools The absence of qualitative and and skills through which a dancer— exciting work in contemporary dance classical or contemporary—creates a in India is all the more conspicuous, new work. It is her medium of creative given the long history of modern expression, definition and self- dance in the country. The pioneering discovery. Traditionally, however, works of choreographers in the last systems of dance pedagogy in India century such as Uday Shankar, neither recognise nor address Kumudini Lakhia and Chandralekha, choreography as an independent to name a few, had all the potential of component of dance education. triggering a revolution in Rather, traditional forms rely on the contemporary dance practice. Yet, internalisation of a predetermined today, in defiance of its vital and grammar and structure through Anusha Lall - The Gati Residency repetition, and the gestation of ‘items’. skills are learnt and exercised but also A dancer learns and repeats, for that personal styles, vocabularies and several years, pre-existing dance interests are nurtured. It necessitates choreographies on which, over time, an expanded vision that includes an she could model her attempts to create understanding of other media and her own dance compositions. technologies. This needs time, space and substantial resources. Most of all This is not to say that principles it demands practice—many times of choreography in movement systems over. such as Bharatanatyam, Chhau and Odissi do not exist. In fact, embedded It is ironic, therefore, that today, in classical forms are highly evolved while we have an expanding choice of choreographic devices and strategies venues and festivals to ‘showcase’ which are capable of producing contemporary dance, there is virtually complex and highly differentiated no organised support— public or experiences of movement in time and private—for dance creation in this space. However, they are rarely, if ever, country. We have developed neither articulated. And they are never the infrastructure nor the creative 35 cogently transmitted. If one were to resources to facilitate a serious and ask a dancer/choreographer why or to qualitative engagement with dance what effect she introduced this creation. Few educational institutions movement over any other, she would include choreography in the likely say that she simply felt like it. curriculum; the guru-shishya system bypasses it altogether. For Our failure to address independent dancers, even basic choreography as a critical component facilities such as rehearsal space, funds of dance pedagogy has had, in the to hire dancers and technical support, context of contemporary Indian dance which are necessary for even practice, a severely debilitating effect. preliminary research and In the absence of choreographic tools development, are hard to come by. and skills, each dancer is left to her More often than not, dancers create own devices. To forge a personal voice alone, without interaction or feedback, in the face of years of training in a and often in the face of surprisingly traditional vocabulary is a daunting vehement opposition. task. It requires not only that new ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 5, Number 1

Supportive space GSDR’s objectives can be summarised thus: It is in response to this scenario To create systems and that the annual Gati Summer Dance infrastructures which assist and Residency (GSDR) was launched in promote process-driven choreographic 2009. GSDR, organised by The Gati practice. Or, in other words, to Dance Forum, New Delhi, has been provide the means and facilities that conceived as a space that supports and enable young choreographers to freely enables artists to propose, explore and develop their own conceptualise and realise their own choreographic voice. choreographic works. Designed for dancers and emerging choreographers, To extract choreographic the residency provides a supportive, principles embedded in our very reflective space for the creation of new distinctive traditional forms so that choreography. Each year, three or four dancers trained in these languages may emerging artists, selected on the basis harness this knowledge as a creative of their proposals and their dance resource in their own individual 36 training, are invited to make their own explorations solo or ensemble pieces over a period of ten weeks. To develop a critical discourse on, and context for, contemporary GSDR is in line with Gati’s dance praxis in India, including current interests and activities. A key scholarship that reflects contemporary area of Gati’s concerns is the concerns and paradigms in dance development of strategies and creation, and mentorship that can approaches to teaching choreographic guide and support new talent skills, especially in the context of Indian traditional dance forms. This, Of the twenty-plus applicants we believe, is fundamental to the from across the country, four development of a vibrant and vital re- choreographers were selected for the engagement with inherited movement residency in 2010. Pune-based systems. Moreover, it is imperative for Rajyashree Ramamurthi, who already the evolution and consolidation of a had considerable experience making new and distinct contemporary Indian solo performance work and is trained voice. in Odissi, proposed to create a solo

Shilpika Bordoloi in her performance piece Impermanence. Photograph by Desmond Roberts.

Lokesh Bhardwaj during a tech rehearsal. Photograph by Desmond Roberts. ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 5, Number 1

inspired by the Manipuri satyagrahi, a daily technique class through the Irom Sharmila. Lokesh Bhardwaj, a period of the residency. Bharatanatyam dancer and yoga practitioner from Delhi, wished to Reflective approach explore the phenomenon of memory based on the analysis of mental The residency’s most distinctive activities found in Patanjali’s feature, however, is that it encourages Yogasutras. Shilpika Bordoloi, a a critical and reflective approach to Manipuri and Bharatanatyam dancer, dance making. The residents are also from Delhi, presented a concept selected as much for their concepts that sought analogies to her and past training and experience as for experience of impermanence in nature. their willingness to embark on a The fourth resident, Divya Vibha journey of self-inquiry and Sharma from Bangalore, who had exploration. In this, a team of mentors been trained in Kathak, Kalaripayattu or ‘outside eyes’ support them at every and contemporary dance, wanted to stage of their creative work. These reference episodes and relationships in mentors are senior artists and teachers 40 her life to make sense of the path that in the field of performance, whose role she seemed to be creating for herself. it is to question, clarify, urge explorations in directions that may GSDR is a deliberately small and have been neglected, and critically intensive residency. It is designed as respond to the residents’ process. This such because, in the absence of any mentor-resident interaction has formal education in contemporary become one of the cornerstones of the choreography, it has to serve as both a residency. Their exchange gives training ground as well as a space for residents access to several pools of individual research and development. experience and expertise, which adds Each choreographer is provided with an immensely to the quality of their honorarium and a rehearsal space for creative investigations. ten weeks, as well as with technical assistance and a production budget to The mentors this year were Maya cover costs related to the choreography Krishna Rao (theatre performer, (such as dancers’ payments, music lecturer and Kathakali artist), Amitesh scores, technical equipment and sets or Grover (theatre director and digital props). The choreographers also attend media artist), and Anusha Lall Anusha Lall - The Gati Residency

(choreographer and dancer). Addi- sections be placed? How should they be tionally, the residency invited three connected? The answers to these guest mentors who conducted questions varied from choreographer to workshops with the residents in their choreographer, depending on the respective fields of expertise: David concept and the material that each had Zambrano (master improvisation artist developed. The final weeks were and teacher from the Netherlands), dedicated to working with lighting, Jonathan O’Hear (lights designer from sound scores, sets and props. At each Switzerland) and Ish Sherawat stage of the process— finalising the (musician). concept, generating movement material, devising a structure, integrating music, The residency’s ten weeks are lights, sets—residents presented their structured to balance process and work to and received feedback from the production. During the initial weeks, mentors as well as from one another. the four residents devised their own working methodology and ways of The use of resources is not generating movement material. This limited to pure exploration; that would was different for each choreographer. be a waste of the already scarce 41 Rajyashree, for example, spent a opportunities in this field. One of the significant amount of time researching objectives of the residency is to Irom Sharmila and interviewing people contribute to the body of contemporary who had met her or made films on her. dance work in the country. The final Then she started drawing on images, performance is therefore in a formal which for Rajyashree represented Irom’s setting, with the appropriate lighting, being, for improvisation. Lokesh, on the costumes and sets. And we see a new other hand, started with his body as the choreographic creation in a contem- site of memory. His research was porary Indian voice finally come to life. concerned with how remembering— consciously and unconsciously—could (The Gati Summer Dance be given a physical vocabulary, and Residency 2010 was supported by Goethe- whether he could adapt his training in Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, India abhinaya and yoga to do so. Foundation for the Arts, Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council, Embassy of The Next, they devised a structure for Netherlands and Bharat Forge.) the work. In what order should the ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 5, Number 1

‘Mentoring was a crucial aspect’ Rajyashree Ramamurthi looks back on her eight-week residency and describes what it meant to her.

I knew about the Gati Summer had worked on, once you secured the Dance Residency in 2009 but since funding, you were left to your own my children were very young I waited devices. Here, the mentoring system is a year to apply. I already had a concept very prominent. It is crucial. The in mind. I had seen a documentary rigorous critical thinking over every film on Irom Sharmila (the Manipuri decision about the work was satyagrahi who has been on a something I hadn’t done for years. You continuous fast for ten years now). I could say that I was a little bit out of was deeply moved by her and by her touch! And at the same time it felt movement. Although there were enlivening to be a part of such an political underpinnings I was more active creative environment. We were 42 interested in her spiritual struggle. I encouraged to take risks and this was wanted to capture what she evoked in very exciting! me and use it as a basis for a performance work. Mentoring was one aspect that I found useful. The other was what they I got a taste of the rigorous called joint presentations: regular questioning during the interviews. I group critiquing. I could see what was quite excited and jittery when I others were going though. I saw from got selected. I started reading up a lot the outside another person’s struggle. about Irom. It was nice to work in a community. We had regular meetings, were I went there with not too many expected to attend classes every expectations. Although I had been a morning. The first week was great! practising artist in the UK before that, We were lucky to work with maestros working as a commissioned artist, such as David Zambrano from the sending proposals and getting projects Netherlands. He helped us open to work on, this was a different ourselves up. He reminded us: “You experience. In the previous projects I are the space and the space is you.” Anusha Lall - The Gati Residency

As far as I know there is no to be a varied and rich experience as I other residency like this in India. I got to work as a choreographer as well took it as an opportunity and a as a performer in someone else’s work. challenge. Working alone as a dancer, you can start stagnating after a while, One of the best things was that and here we were encouraged to work I didn’t have to organise anything. I together and share experiences with wouldn’t have been able to afford the our fellow artists. I ended up working time, space, money—all those on Divya’s (a fellow resident) resources that they took care of. It felt performance, “Don’t Be Dotty”. It was like a big treat! It gave me a space diametrically opposite to the nature of where I could be myself, go deep my own work, so the residency proved within myself.

43

Rajyashree Ramamurthi was inspired by a Divya and Rajyashree in Don't be Dotty by documentary film on Irom Sharmila. Divya Vibha Sharma. Photograph by Desmond Roberts. Photograph by Desmond Roberts. ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 5, Number 1

‘Getting feedback while working was new to me’ The residency helped Shilpika Bordoloi clarify her concept, work with a diverse group, and deal with criticism during the evolution of her piece.

clarity I had about it was that it would have a connection with nature and the spiritual, which have always influenced me deeply. It was much later that abstraction and specifics came together to create the notion of ‘impermanence’.

I had already done a solo piece called Longing where my analogy was the journey of a river on the way to meet the sea. Here, in Impermanence, it was the winding journey of a river in the open, and within was the forest. So the forest became a major analogy to be developed further. When they interviewed me during the selection process, they queried me on how I would actually develop this. My thoughts were about changing

Shilpika Bordoloi. Photograph by Amitesh Grover. landscapes and a process which originates from physical energy and later cognises into emotional motifs, My work at Gati was about and not the other way around. changing landscapes. Initially, my concept, which I presented to them, The first week of the residency was about parallel streams of my life. I was intensive. It was fantastic! knew I wanted a piece about my life, Mentors like David Zambrano—he is the stories within. But the only bit of a phenomenon, a rockstar! The Anusha Lall - The Gati Residency process was really inspiring. We because the piece kept on changing. worked on looking at space, on One week before the performance we looking at where we were in terms of had to do a presentation, complete projection. David made us work with with sets and costumes. I listened to intensive movement/physical the feedback and for the final impulses, and it gelled very well with performance I presented a completely what I wanted to do. different work from my presentation! There was no compulsion, no rigid We had three mentors who met demand that you have to stick to us once during the process of creation, something and do only that. Even on in spaces they had given us to the day of the performance my rehearse, and thrice for presentations. emotive journey was different. It kept changing. It was a celebration of the Getting feedback during the moment and in that I found inherent evolution of the piece was new for me. beauty! It was an interesting opportunity for me to get feedback while actually It didn’t end for me there. working on a piece. To constantly get Mainly because the process I chose 45 feedback, to understand feedback— was so different, the concept kept on that was a challenge, since you usually developing. I would say it is a develop a work on your own, all alone. continuing process. In many ways this residency was about working with critics and finding the The residency is a wonderful clarity in the choices one makes. thing. You don’t have anything like Working with a community of artists this in the country. We don’t have to for one evening was a new experience. worry about booking the hall, inviting In future I know I will be able to work the audience, who should do the in any diverse group—the residency lights… It’s all taken care of. The helped me see that. residency offers us that luxury. You need to just do what you should do, A huge challenge for me was the what you are meant to do, as an artist. limitation of time. If you work with physicality you can go on and on, but there was a date set for the final performance. The title also came up ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 5, Number 1

‘They all experienced a huge growth curve’ Theatre director, multimedia artist and pedagogue Amitesh Grover describes how he mentored dancers for the first time.

I have been a visiting faculty the residency and the degree to which member at the National School of we could start pushing them. Drama, so mentoring was not new to me. But I have been working with My first session with them was a actors, designers and programmers; this very short one; we looked at body, is the first time I have mentored spoken text, camera projection and the dancers/choreographers. nature of this interaction. When I met the dancers individually I saw that I was surprised at first when there were some instances where they Anusha (Lall) asked me to be a mentor, did bring multimedia into their work. but then it became clear that the dance A lot of practice, time, was needed to 46 residency had an open-ended format get the ideas to work. My job was to and many other disciplines could be say no! To guide them on what they brought in. Interestingly, I collaborate can and cannot be exploring. with a Chhau dancer, so there was a certain overlap with my role at Gati. I When I went in to watch the have worked on many shows with dancers I was looking at the body in NSD graduate Amit Saxena, who has performance, the self, the grammar. I learnt Chhau for years; I have worked have worked with Maya for four years with him on looking at the so I wouldn’t say I am uninitiated in intersections between Chhau and dance. And like Maya (who has acting. phenomenal experience in both theatre and dance), I focussed on questioning When Anusha, Maya (Rao) and I the artistic process and identifying sat down to look at the nature of the ideas that had the potential to be residency it became very apparent that explored further. we were looking at a new grammar. Our success would depend on the openness My job was to go in and raise of the applicants, their growth during questions they weren’t asking themselves. Lokesh Bhardwaj during a tech rehearsal. Photograph by Desmond Roberts.

Some of the dancers developed greatly I helped them push the limit of during the residency. I looked at the body. For example, I would notice episodes, sequences, and at the material that after a 15-minute piece, nobody they used—basically, anything that was would be sweating at the end. I pushed not the body. They came up with them to the threshold. I would ask, are material such as swimming costumes, a we really experiencing, or are we just ball of wool, jute dipped in white paint… demonstrating grammar? How the body in dance interacts with 47 ordinary material and how it becomes I think the residency is a fantastic extraordinary—that’s what we were idea. There are very, very few such looking at. opportunities in our country. I have seen all the dancers go through such a I observed a difference between huge growth curve. In just ten weeks, actors and dancers when it came to the so much can be achieved. If it were to face and body. With actors, there was a extend, and continue, it would be face-down participation of the body, absolutely wonderful. In fact, I have and with dancers it was the opposite! asked some of my actors to apply for With actors, the face was very much the residency. present and I had to get them to bring in the physical presence. The dancers, For the dancer/choreographer it being classically trained, placed a lot of is an opportunity to not only be within emphasis on the hand, leg, torso, and the piece but also step out and look at the face was completely absent. So I what is produced. They gain absolute pointed that out and got them to ownership over their own work. achieve a unity of face and body. Bhagrumal and accompanists at the Halani Darbar, Ajmer. The Risalo: Poetry in Performance

By Shalini Panjabi

Photographs by Shalini Panjabi

Shah Abdul Latif (or Bhitai as he is popularly known) is the pre-eminent Sindhi poet, widely regarded and revered as a Sufi. His Risalo, a compilation of his verses composed nearly three centuries ago, is a living, breathing presence all the way through from Kachchh to Baluchistan. Shalini Panjabi explores the proliferation of forms in which the Risalo continues to be read, quoted, recited and sung. ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 5, Number 1

ollowing the diverse tracks but a partial reading, and the around Shah Abdul Latif and variegated ways in which the tales are Fhis poetry in western Rajasthan received and performed reveals a and Kachchh has led me to varied multifaceted text. performance forms. Shah Latif ’s poetry is usually classified as mystical It is a text that speaks centrally poetry, yet the rendering of his verses of the lives and the landscape of the and couplets in a variety of situations area, celebrating its distinctive terrain seems to endow them with a life of and way of life. Shah Latif is strikingly their own, and different a poet of the region; he is not merely interpretations and forms abound. the most popular Sindhi poet, but the Nearly three centuries after they were poet of Sindh. His poetry is composed, his verses have been kept inseparable from the land and its alive by different groups of people in people—“zameen ji aaye”, I was told. the border regions of India adjoining The stories and the many sub-stories Sindh. in the Risalo have a variety of settings, with the characters following myriad 50 The Risalo of Shah Latif is a professions and undertaking long compilation of his verses, and journeys. Covering a geographical area comprises a series of surs—lyrical from Baluchistan and Sindh to compositions arranged according to Rajasthan and Kachchh, the narratives their musical settings. There are about constantly evoke the rich and complex thirty surs, (the exact number varies in interactions in the region. There are different editions of the Risalo), and detailed portrayals of various most of these portray episodes of well- communities: camel herders, known folk stories of the region. The fishermen, pastoral nomads, potters, stories include Sassui Punhun, Umar ironsmiths, traders, hunters, farmers, Marui, Rano Mumal, Lila Chanesar, holy men, shipping merchants and Suhni Mehar, Sorath Rai Diyach and many others. People delight in the Nuri Jam Tamachi, and there is also a poetic depiction of their lives, with sur on the battle at Karbala (the minute observations on crafts, houses, historic battle that is commemorated dress and so on. There are also many during Moharrum). The tales are evocative descriptions of landforms, of usually placed under the rubric of various grasses and trees, of animals allegorical romances, symbolising the big and small. The imagery in the quest for the divine. However, this is Risalo is also often symbolic, and the Shalini Panjabi - The Risalo poetry is understood and enjoyed at sing, recite and listen to Sindhi multiple levels. poetry.

Kachchh and the area west of In the Risalo, each tale is Barmer and Jaisalmer in Rajasthan are presented as a series of selected historically considered as belonging to episodes. No tale is told in its entirety; the ‘Sindhi belt’. Sindh has been seen often, even a proper sequence of as the cultural heartland of the region, events is not delineated. This episodic, the fountainhead of various musical, fragmentary nature of Shah Latif ’s craft and literary traditions. There oeuvre is echoed in the varied were also ties of patronage, pilgrimage, renderings today, and the narratives seasonal migration, marital alliance emerge often as songs, couplets and and trade with Sindh. These links aphorisms. This refraction allows for a continued after Partition, as the multitude of performance forms, as border between India and Pakistan even snippets resonate with meaning. was porous in the initial decades. Shah Latif ’s poetry is quoted, recited Border controls began to be gradually and sung in various ways. These can tightened after the War of 1965, but be with or without musical 51 regular, furtive movement of people accompaniment. The surs are also continued from both sides. With played on different musical increased tension, however, the border instruments with no vocal began to be sealed from the 1980s and accompaniment. There is a symbiotic is now fully fenced and guarded. The relation between music and words in cessation of movement across the the Risalo, with the surs composed to border has had a major impact on the be recited or sung. The lyricism of the lives of people in the area. Yet the poetry and its wide appeal across a bonds with Sindh persist, as spectrum of communities has led to a exemplified in the vitality of Sindhi proliferation of forms. poetic and musical traditions today. Several villages in Kachchh and in the When travelling in the area, one districts of Barmer and Jaisalmer are hears Latif at various times and inhabited primarily by Sindhi- occasions. His poetry emerges in speaking communities. Other people everyday conversations, as proverbs or speak Dhati or Kachchhi—and now illustrations of a point or even as increasingly Gujarati, Hindi and greetings. Older men often recite Marwari—yet many continue to read, couplets or beyts when they meet, to ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 5, Number 1

express their joy at the meeting, or to is recited, which is special to the allude to the journey made, or even to region. Earlier it was a primary mode gently admonish the visitor for having of entertainment in the villages, as come after so long. Such is the power men would gather after work and and beauty of Latif ’s poetry, I was begin discussing and reciting. told, that even a reprimand gives joy. Nowadays it seems to take place A young singer from Kachchh usually at the sidelines of melas (fairs) expressively stated, “A beyt is like a gift or weddings. from a friend.” The gift cycle is completed when the response is also I witnessed spontaneous rihaans received in the form of a beyt. Latif ’s a few times, as I went around seeking poetry appears as a flexible medium men and women who knew Bhitai for expression, with “people using it well. Soon a few of them would start variously, to the extent they exchanging beyts and animatedly understand”. Another singer also discussing their possible meanings. described Shah Latif as a true ‘shayar’, One man would recite a beyt, then as one whose poetry transcends his another would recite the next beyt in 52 times. Shah Latif ’s poetry speaks the series (kadi) or a beyt that directly to its readers and listeners, expressed a similar sentiment, and so even though life here, as elsewhere, has it would continue through related changed. beyts. The recitation or delivery of a beyt is referred to as ‘beyt dena’ (giving Circulating Poetry a beyt), and it is also given to elicit a response. The response is in the form The Risalo is a written text and of another beyt and also, periodically, many read it silently, but it thrives in is an exposition of its meaning. In the circulation. It is largely learnt and rihaans, this exchange was recited amongst people, especially accompanied by frequent exclamations amongst knowledgeable people of praise—for the beauty of the lyrics (jaankar). This often happens at and for the mode of their delivery. formal or informal gatherings called Amid the mutual appreciation, rihaans (kacheris). however, there was also a sense of A rihaan, I was told in jest, is competition among the men. On whenever five men meet and start display were one’s recall (how much talking. It is an event in which poetry one remembers of the narratives), comprehension (how well one can Shalini Panjabi - The Risalo expound on the many meanings of a As much as Latif ’s poetry couplet), and the breadth of evokes the landscape, this form of its one’s repertoire (with people trying to transmission has been itself shaped by recite relatively unknown couplets). the landscape. In this arid region Rihaans are often spaces for the people have been primarily dependent performance of one’s knowledge of on livestock rearing and dryland the Risalo, with people being known in farming. In the past, agricultural work the region for the mastery of different was largely confined to four rainy aspects of it. A rihaan is incomplete months in a year, the chaumasa. There without its audience of men, old and was a lot of spare time and men spent young, who sit around and listen. many evenings and nights at rihaans. There are always eager listeners asking These could be in an otak (room for questions and even reciting a line or receiving male visitors) or even around two. a fire in the open. Apart from the beyts of Shah Latif and other poets, there

Kaamil Meher, Rano Fakir and Allu Khan singing the surs. Sumar Fakir and Mitho Fakir with their dhamburas and Fakir Jan Mohammed singing the surs.

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 5, Number 1

thrived a whole world of oral games black robed fakirs who sang his verses and complex riddles at the rihaans. as his children. These fakirs sang his This tradition has declined but is still poetry the way he himself sang it, to alive, and new riddles (some based on the accompaniment of the dhambura, Shah’s poetry) continue to be a five-stringed instrument that he composed. invented. The descendants and disciples of those fakirs still sing Shah The continued vitality of Shah Latif ’s poetry every night at his Latif ’s music and poetry is most dargah in Bhit, Sindh. In India, there evident in communities that feel is just one group of three men in specially connected with him. Notable Kachchh who sing Shah’s vais (a vai is amongst these are the Jats. Many of a form of verse) in this style. It is also Shah Latif ’s murids (disciples) are said referred to as the Dhamburai Raag to have been Jats, and they figure and is a unique, high-pitched style, prominently in the narratives too. The haunting in its effect. It is a rigorous community of Fakirani Jats in form, requiring years of training. The Kachchh claims descent from one of fakirs sing only Shah’s poetry, but 56 Shah’s main murids, Sanvla Fakir. The their delivery in a falsetto is not easily Fakirani Jats were earlier a very comprehensible even to the local distinct group, living a frugal life with listeners. A senior musician likened few possessions. The shrine of Sanvla their mode of enunciation to the Fakir stands on a small island in Sir deliberate babble we adopt with a Creek, on the very border between small child, adding that Shah Latif India and Pakistan. It is now out of adopted this mode before God. bounds to all except the security forces, but that has not diminished the The three fakirs here live in the community’s attachment (lagav) to same village in the Rann of Kachchh. Shah Latif. There are still a substantial Their houses are partially built on number of Fakirani Jats who are stilts, to protect against the annual regarded highly for their knowledge of inundation. They are livestock the Risalo. herders, and a bad monsoon can still force them to move out of their homes The Fakirs who sing the Shah Jo for a few months. Yet, wherever they Raag are said to be relations of Shah are, they get together every Thursday Latif ’s early murids. According to night (jume ki raat) and sing Shah’s tradition, Shah Latif referred to the vais. Their performances outside are at Shalini Panjabi - The Risalo a few melas, and they are the only there is greater emphasis on the singers at the dargah of Lakha Fakir— words, for the audience knows the another of Shah Latif ’s murids. poetry. Occasionally they also perform Recently they have performed a few the tales from the Risalo as dastans— times at stage concerts too. renditions with intermittent singing and speech—which can last anything Shah Latif has probably been from half an hour to a whole night, heard outside the Sindhi speaking although nowadays they are usually of communities only over the last few a short duration. decades, at the Sufi concerts organised regularly at urban centres across the The dastans have been the country. At these concerts the primary mode for the formal delivery appreciation of the audience is based of the Risalo, and also a major source largely on the identification of the of entertainment. A few decades ago, music with Sufism, as most have little live performances began to be knowledge of the language. Shah recorded and circulated as audio Latif ’s poetry and the performances cassettes. Later, many studio are seen as representative of a ‘secular’ recordings of dastans were also done. 57 genre, symbols of a syncretic culture. These cassettes and CDs—especially For the singers there is some irony of Pakistani artists—are still widely here, as Shah Latif ’s lyrics get bought and listened to in Rajasthan marginalised even as they are widely and Kachchh. I was fortunate to hear circulated. a live rendition of a dastan by a senior musician at a small dargah. He sang The Manganiars from western through the night, with a small group, Rajasthan have been amongst the on a Savsumar, the first Monday of a communities most visible at these month of the Islamic calendar. concerts. As a community of caste Devotees had been coming through musicians, they are highly adept at the day, but the music programme their craft. At the concerts they only began well after dinner. The perform as a group, singing in a singers sat facing the audience in an rhythmic style and are usually cheered open courtyard adjoining the dargah. on by their audiences. When they They sang a dastan from Sur Hussaini perform locally and before their and a few kalams. On a cold night, patrons, they exhibit a slightly fuelled by a continual supply of sweet different style. It is more low-key and tea, the audience of forty to fifty men ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 5, Number 1

remained largely constant. They were migrated from Sindh over the last few from villages around and they listened centuries. Some of these communities closely, often nodding and exclaiming are Sindhi speaking, while others in appreciation. When the programme speak Dhati. They are all mainly ended at daybreak, the men stood herders and small farmers. The Sindhi around chatting with the singers speaking communities of the Mehers, before leaving for their homes. Most Daras and Balochis sing the kalams of of them would be back on the first Shah Latif and other Sindhi poets Monday of the following month. especially during the months of Muhurram and Rabi al-awwal (the In the Islamic Calendar month of the Prophet’s birthday). A performance tradition that They sing in tolis (groups) of about significantly marks days in the Islamic five men, usually without calendar is the raag of the Sindhi accompaniment. Sitting almost in a Muslims of western Rajasthan. The circle, they recite or sing the kalams in term ‘Sindhi Muslim’ covers a an atonal style, individually and in chorus. Interestingly, these are also 58 spectrum of communities that have Shalini Panjabi - The Risalo often competitive performances wedding songs. In Pakistan, though, (muqablas) between tolis from there have been some different villages. One group starts renowned professional women and the other has to pick up reciting singers—the most well known here is or singing from the point they stop. It Abida Parveen. Locally, Mai Bhagi and is a difficult style, requiring knowledge Begum Fakirani are highly regarded. of the kalams and of the ragas and On a few occasions I was shown short surs. All the singers I met had learnt videos of Mai Bhagi on mobile from their ustads, who had been phones, a medium of recording and mainly Sindhi Muslims proficient in sharing that has been adopted very the tradition. This training, though, swiftly in the villages. On inexpensive had been intermittent, restricted to handsets, men download videos from the short periods when the singers the Internet and record live renderings were able to stay with their ustads. in villages around, allowing for a truly mobile medium for the circulation of There are many other styles of performances. singing Shah Latif ’s poetry. The Meghwals, some of who are recent There is yet another aspect of 59 migrants from Sindh, sing Bhitai as the Risalo in performance: as they do bhajans, to the exposition. The Risalo is regarded as a accompaniment of a tanpura and holy text by many Muslims, and one cymbals. Women of the Saansi tribe reading of it is as an exegesis of the sing in unison in a low pitch, and even Koran. In this form, the poetry can be occasionally perform at weddings. A heard in the takreer (religious lecture) few individuals, from different of maulvis and is also recited communities, are renowned for their occasionally during the khutba knowledge of the surs of Shah Latif, (sermon) after the Friday prayers. of the music he composed. Vais or Concurrently the Sindhi Hindus too kafis or dastans are meant to be sung have always had a very high regard for in the appropriate surs. Most singers the Risalo. Some of them refer to it as today know just five or six of the the ‘fifth Veda’ and regularly read its thirty surs, but there are still a few ‘shlokas’—a term they sometimes people who know about fifteen surs. employ for the couplets. The Bhagat, a theatrical form with a mélange of Women sing Bhitai too, but song, music and dance, was primarily usually in the home as lullabies or as associated with the Hindus in Sindh.

Abdullah Hussein Turk, accompanied by Majrudddin, singing at the dargah of Lakha Pir and Raimal Pir in Kachchh. ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 5, Number 1

Yet, most often the Bhagat singers and Bulle Shah, with intermittent (known as bhagats) would sing the commentary. Devotees kept walking songs of Shah Latif and others at their in, some sat for a while, others moved all-night performances. I met one of on after bowing to the statue of the the few surviving bhagats in Ajmer, Guru and placing some money before but unfortunately have not been able the musicians. This was a ‘satsang’ for to witness a performance. them.

Ajmer has a large community of For me, it was yet another form Sindhi Hindus who settled there after of performance of Shah Latif ’s poetry Partition. The many Darbars there are the seats of the different Gurus, and most of them are spaces with rather undefined religious boundaries. At the Halani Darbar, the main room of worship was like a 60 gurudwara, with the Granth Sahib at its centre. When I went to the Darbar, a senior singer was singing with two young accompanists in an adjoining room. Sitting under a tableau of mixed iconography—of the Sikh Gurus and Ganesha and Durga—they were singing the kalams of Shah Latif

Raimal Meher, Rano Fakir, Kaamil Meher and Haji Khan. Shalini Panjabi - The Risalo that I had witnessed. Rooted in the language use and ways of speaking, region and interwoven with the life of and in more tangible forms with the the people, the renderings of the main focus being on the text. The Risalo emerge in continual variation. ‘textual community’ of the Risalo, an These expressions embody the intertwining of the oral and the domain of performance—performance written, has given rise to as verbal art, of which a whole range is multitudinous possibilities. represented here: as modes of

Beautiful Thing 1: Exploring Gender and Geometries

Parvathi Nayar

The premiere of Padmini Chettur’s new contemporary dance work, Beautiful Thing 1, which emerged from a two-year workshopping process, took place at Adishakti’s Theatre in Pondicherry in June 2009. Parvathi Nayar found it an effective and uncompromising piece of contemporary dance, which had an integrated approach to the body and questioned the notion of dancer as seductress.

Akila, one of the dancers in Beautiful Thing 1. Photograph by Jirka Jansch. ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 5, Number 1

Aarabi, Sujata, Akila, Anoushka and Preethi, dancers from Beautiful Thing 1, pose in a studio. Photograph by Sara.

he premiere of Beautiful level, for Chettur worked with poet Thing 1 offered a certain Vivek Narayanan for the text and Tsatisfactory resolution to the Maarten Visser for the music. A clue two-year project that engendered the to Chettur’s creative preoccupations piece. It is vintage Padmini Chettur: can be found in the title of the work, 64 stark, with a minimalist poetry and which was chosen in a spirit of irony. the signature absence of any It reflects her own questioning of the superfluous movement or emotion. necessity of beauty in a dancer when the dancer is viewed as a seductress Beautiful Thing 1 emerged from enticing the viewer into the dance. a workshopping process with There is also a certain irony in the Chettur’s troupe of dancers. Although appendage ‘1’ referring to the fad of she stated that her intent was to works being created in series. explore time, and geometries and Incidentally, though not intended as grids, the piece is also, as we shall see, such by Chettur, one can find a an exploration of other concepts, such resonance in her title with the title of as the process behind artistic creation, the famous, performance art piece by the nature of the body (especially the cutting-edge performance artist female body and the dancer’s body), Marina Abramovic, ‘Art must be and the coming together of text and beautiful, an artist must be beautiful’; performance. in this work the subversive nature of Beautiful Thing 1 is a the statement was made obvious by collaborative piece as well, at some the juxtaposition of words and action; Parvathi Nayar - Beautiful Thing 1

The five dancers were asked to relax for a moment. Photograph by Sara. the artist brushes her hair while values so much as the sense that the repeating the phrases in the title over performance/dance had reached a and over. certain level of proficiency. The communal atmosphere at Adishakti’s There was a reason for Chettur’s theatre also allowed for lengthy choice of venue. From her point of discussions about the intent of the 65 view, the space at the Sir Ratan Tata piece and its realisation, among Koothu Kovil, Adishakti’s theatre, gave Chettur, her dancers, collaborators, and her an opportunity to try out the piece the well-wishers and professionals who with a select audience that included attended the premiere. As a physical professionals from whom she was able space, Adishakti’s theatre, with its to get feedback, rather than do it more parquet floors, charcoal walls and publicly. She observed that the intimate ambience, allowed for a very limitations of technical support in direct interaction with the dance, where Pondicherry—such as lighting—made the spoken words and the deliberate her feel that the piece wasn’t entirely exhalations of breath were all palpable. resolved in its presentation there; However, the size of the venue did however, it gave her and her dancers an limit the audience severely. excellent sense of the work, and of what further refinements could be The arc of the dance in Beautiful brought to the piece. She said it helped Thing 1 was built as a series of her prepare the work for the next interconnected movements—perfor- stage—not in terms of production med in solos, pairs and groups. A sense ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 5, Number 1

of the dance being about the body created by the dancers were like a under exploration was made evident by basic a-b-c that Chettur used to build such devices as isolated articulations of the ‘sentences’ that constituted the parts of the body, or the highlighting of eventual dance called Beautiful Thing weight transfers, or the manipulation of 1. Importantly, it is she who created the head as a separate appendage the pacing, and the interlocking of the attached to the body. The various components into a whole, to fashion elements of the dance came together the intent of the piece around grids very well, and the framework of a and movement, form and time. mathematical underpinning was also Chettur does not see the dance as evident in such aspects of the having to necessarily ‘be’ about choreography as the strongly conceived something; for her, it is about the diagonals, and the numbers called out body and its articulation. The body by the dancers. has its own language, and the dancer is trained to give a form to this language. Creating a Language On a different note, the body of the An immediate response to the trained dancer is unarguably and 66 work was a recognition of the quality necessarily a beautiful thing. of consistency within the dance, which To remark that Chettur deals probably arose from the duration and with the female body in her dance is process dedicated to its creation. not stating the obvious. The body has Under Chettur’s guidance, the dancers been the site of investigation of many created the performance language for contemporary dancer/choreographers. the piece through a workshopping It is true that all dance is about the methodology: they were asked to pick body, but a few choreographers such up random pieces of paper with the as Chettur go beyond that, looking at name of a body part written on it. the body as both subject and object, Then they had to find a physical rather than as the object with which articulation to express the specific part to discuss specific subjects. Even of the body mentioned in the paper within particular works of they had picked up. Chettur converted choreography where the intent of the this vocabulary of bodily expressions choreography is to specifically explore into a distinct kind of phraseology; in the body in its entirety or some other words, the individual specific aspect of the body, no two expressions of specific body parts works are alike: the approach of the Parvathi Nayar - Beautiful Thing 1 specific choreographer, whether Pina Chettur’s work exists in this belief- Bausch, Jerome Bell or Meg Stuart, system. As a dancer she presents work sets each work apart. In Chettur’s case in a contemporary arena, dealing with there is a certain integrated approach the female body as a site of strength. to the body. Though in the structuring of Beautiful Thing 1, Chettur presents Approach to Emotion various parts of the body in isolated The female dancer—male movements, it does not give a sense of dancers are noticeable by their the dismembered or conflicted body. absence—in Beautiful Thing 1 is a Rather, her work is a schematic confident if unemotional presence. Or approach to how various parts to be more specific, the point is not interlink and are articulated. that the dancers are ‘emotionless’; Though there is no attempt to rather, they choose not to engage with proselytise on the part of the emotional expressions on their faces; choreographer, i.e. Chettur’s work the narrative is carried entirely within carries no overt ‘message’ relating to their bodies. social issues, it would be impossible Chettur eschews the projection 67 not to read into the work certain ideas of facial emotions by the dancers as a of gender. This arises from Chettur’s device that is ‘learnt’ and expressed, for own philosophies and life several reasons. Chief among them is experiences/choices as a dancer. her rebellion against classical Indian Though trained in the classical dance forms such as Bharatanatyam in Bharatanatyam tradition, Chettur as a which the dancer plays the role of dancer made her big break from the seductress. A second reason is that classical form under the tutelage of Chettur is a dancer/choreographer Chandralekha (between 1991 and who prefers the dance to exist in the 2001). moment, not as a piece of theatre in An iconoclastic and original which the emotion is pre-learnt. She dancer/choreographer, Chandralekha likes the dancers’ concentration to be in pushed Indian classical dance into a themselves and their bodies, and for contemporary arena. She is quoted as them to be totally present mentally and describing her work as “celebrations of physically in the moment of the dance. the human body”, as opposed to a Such an approach is of course, form of worship of a godhead. very visibly, a double-edged sword. Plain tops arranged in front of the stage were donned by the dancers in the final stage of Beautiful Thing 1. Photograph by Jirka Jansch.

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 5, Number 1

The strength of the piece lies in how continued to have further impact. the dancers are almost ferociously Still, there continued to exist the concentrated in the space-time latent danger—that was evident in continuum in which they have placed Pushed as well—that the dancers their bodies to progress through a might exist so powerfully in their own prescribed movement. They do not space that others are not invited in. invite emotional interaction but they do invite engagement through their A significant step taken in one-pointed focus. It is this intensity Beautiful Thing 1, in resolving this of physical expression—rather than paradox, was the introduction of text inviting smiles/looks from the into the dance. The text, conceived in dancers—that the audience engages collaboration with poet Vivek with (or not). Narayanan, was successful in parts. The naming of the body and the Personally, this kind of citation of mathematical numbers was concentration is completely absorbing; a good entry into the dance’s one doesn’t feel the need for a dancer underpinning of mathematical grids 70 to seduce with practiced invitations. and bodily articulations. Through the What kept my attention, for example, incorporation of gestures of blocking was the dancers’ focus, which drew me the mouth (thus blocking speech), the in mentally and intellectually. Patently, contrast between bodily however, this need not be the reaction communication and verbal languages of all members of the audience; some was suggested; silencing the dancer viewers could experience feelings of verbally could yet allow another kind exclusion, of being cut off from the of communication that is all physical. world that the dancer inhabits. Other textual elements such as background snippets of the dancers Thus Chettur’s intention of did not feel as integral; however, you communication without seduction could argue that these textual created an intriguingly tricky elements added texture to the piece. interaction between audience and dancer—an almost paradoxical The use of text allowed for one situation. In Beautiful Thing 1 the of the most successful passages in the particular language that she has dance: the linking of word and mudra. developed over the years, which was Until this point in the dance, the particularly effective in Paper Doll, movement vocabulary created for the Parvathi Nayar - Beautiful Thing 1 piece was seen as specific to particular appear, was that the soundscape articulations of the lower body. We should remain in the realm of sound, saw how hip and leg were linked even rather than harmonies. Though the as there was a deliberate disassociation sound was industrial, Visser created it of the core from the arms and hands. all from acoustic sounds including This choreographic choice was both those emitted from non-traditional highlighted and altered by the sources such as wind-up toys or powerful passage that linked mudras instruments such as the santoor. He and words—thereby also bringing believes that the discerning audience together the performative and text will always hear the “hand behind the elements. music”.

External Elements As for the lighting, by M. Natesh, it offered some interesting As a piece of performance, moments. At a particular instant in obviously there were external elements the dance, for example, when the in play in Beautiful Thing 1, some of dancers were retreating in a diagonal them site-specific. At Adishakti’s line, they were ‘backlit’; this lighting 71 theatre, the stage was bare, and the choice threw into prominence sharply- black box space didn’t permit, for lit silhouettes of muscle and form on example, the use of wings; it is the body. However, lighting was not uncertain whether it was useful to see completely integrated into the dance, the dancers off-stage seated on the and some of the accents needed more side, or whether it would have been specificity; perhaps the technical beneficial to stick to the finite limitations of the space did mean that experience of revealing the dancers it was not a fully realised component only on stage. of the piece. Chettur said that she was Background music was provided concurrently also working with by Maarten Visser, who used an Belgian collaborator and lighting industrial-sounding idiom in the designer Yann Martens for her first compositions. It was a true performance abroad of Beautiful Thing collaboration between Chettur and 1 at Salzburg. Visser, revealing the ease that came In terms of the costumes, from having worked on many pieces appropriately, the look was together. Chettur’s need, it would contemporary, and the clothes were Total concentration on the body invited the audience to engage rather than emotionally interact with the dance. Photograph by Jirka Jansch.

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 5, Number 1

designed as blocks of colours—lime, emerging art form. Like Chettur, most magenta, purple, mustard and grey. acclaimed contemporary Indian The costumes did their job, but not as dancers do have a background in one spectacularly as they did, say, in Paper of the classical forms, which, arguably, Doll. Perhaps the range of colours was offers the rigorous training that too large or perhaps the use of colours dancers need (though this is an and shapes was not manipulated assertion that comes up for debate enough to make a distinct costuming when the dancers also seek training in statement. However, it must be noted a Western idiom of contemporary that the costuming in no way dance). Still, even Astad Deboo— detracted from the work. often referred to as the pioneer of modern dance in India—did train in One particular costuming choice the traditional form of Kathakali was extremely successful. At the before going on to learn the style of performance, plain tops in the same the seminal Martha Graham. In block colours as the rest of the Chettur’s case, her classical training costumes were arranged in a line in and contemporary sensibilities stand 74 front of the stage, and were donned by her in good stead. the dancers in the final passage of the dance. The tops proved to be made of Even though the contemporary stretchy material and the performers is a nascent form, what offers hope is literally extended themselves by that there are many ways in which it pulling, stretching and suspending is evolving. For example, some strains their weight with the aid of these of contemporary dance stretchy tops. Apart from being an experimentation in India seek to fuse effective piece of movement, it was the classical framework with other also satisfying as a perfect melding of performative traditions such as costume and dance. martial arts or yoga. Certainly, groups such as Attakkalari or the Beautiful Thing 1 was an Daksha Sheth Dance Company have effective and uncompromising piece of gained recognition for mixing a contemporary dance, which was number of Indian performance experienced as a logical extension and elements such as kalaripayattu, yoga, continuation of Chettur’s oeuvre. classical and folk dances. Meanwhile, Contemporary or modern dance in other dancers such as Aditi India is still a reasonably new and Mangaldas have chosen to vigorously Parvathi Nayar - Beautiful Thing 1 reinterpret classical forms (which in indicated that the response was very Mangaldas’ case is Kathak) and bring positive there. The work continued them to a contemporary arena. Yet to evolve, and Chettur was able to others such as Odissi-trained incorporate certain technical changes Ananya Chatterjee have used the into the piece at Salzburg, such as in classical in a contemporary sense to the lighting. With the use of some offer specific messages; Chatterjee 200 lights, large washes of lighting allows street theatre to influence her created a narrative about how we see work to create a form of activism the body and/or the movement at through dance and look at issues that specific times. The light, apparently, concern women. was always shifting; for example from the dancers being backlit to Chettur’s niche is specifically frontlit over the course of five her own, where the traditional minutes. As for the look of the piece informs the modern only in subtle onstage, a broad white stripe was and conceptual ways. The intent, introduced on which the stretchy t- always, is uncompromisingly shirts that would later be donned by contemporary. Chettur’s the dancers were placed. Chettur also 75 choreography offers no nod, hopes to modify the costumes apologetic or otherwise, towards any further, in time for future tours of form of ‘fusion’ nor expresses a need Beautiful Thing 1 that include Berlin to show the lineage of the dancers. and Hamburg. Beautiful Thing 1 sees Chettur continue, successfully, to push the It becomes very important then contested boundaries of what is seen to appreciate that the Pondicherry as contemporary dance in India. She premiere also worked as a crucial is one of the most important jumping board from which Beautiful contemporary Thing 1 could be taken outside dancers/choreographers working in India. And that in this way, Chettur India today. continues be an ambassador for Indian contemporary dance, linking Afterword India and countries abroad with a After the Pondicherry shared appreciation for the evolving premiere, Beautiful Thing 1 was idiom of contemporary dance. shown in Salzburg, and Chettur

Alladeen and Dancing on Glass: Two Ways of Looking at Globality

By Jisha Menon

All photographs, by Virginia Rodrigues, show Meghana Mundkur and Abhishek Majumdar in scenes from Dancing on Glass.

Having watched an Indian and an international play featuring call centre employees, Jisha Menon found their approaches to the subject vastly different. While one used the phantasmic mode of depiction, the other captured the disjuncture between the discourse on globalisation and the embodiment of its realities. ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 5, Number 1

watched Ram Ganesh and London. It portrays the training Kamatham’s Dancing on Glass in and work sessions of the call centre IBangalore in July 2004, just employees in Bangalore, and the months after watching Alladeen in Los pedagogical indoctrination into Angeles. A collaborative production American tongues, lifestyles and by the London-based Motiroti and the popular cultural references that New York City-based The Builders constitute an important part of the Association, Alladeen is a multi-media training of call centre employees. show that depicts the circuits of global Alladeen explores various strategies of capital between New York, Bangalore impersonation: the ways in which the employees take on American names and identities derived from American television’s famous sit-com, Friends.

I had been looking forward to watching the work of two companies well known for their avant-garde and cutting-edge style. But it was odd watching this play in an audience of predominantly white American viewers. I still recall how I instinctively withdrew from the programmed, spectatorial pleasures of the show when the audience laughter at the hapless imitations of American accents resounded in the theatre.

But my uneasiness did not end there: I was troubled by the play’s insistence on a phantasmic mode of depiction that made invisible the material disorientations of the employees. The phantasmic character of these transformations—from Satya to Monica, Savitri to Rachel and Jisha Menon - Dancing on Glass

Aman to Joey—is reiterated through attention to the material, mortal body, the scenic design: images from simultaneously in rapture and in pain. Hollywood and Bollywood movies alternate; blue globes turn in the The play tracks the life of workspace; green lamps float through Megha, aka Megan, a young, black space, heightening the sense of confident, ‘liberal’ call centre employee fantasy. These transformations who gradually descends into a vortex exemplify the ways in which the of depression and gloom. In addition employees are seduced by to the repetitive tedium deterritorialised discourses on of her job, and the globality. Through a process that racist and sexist simultaneously disavows the material abuse she implications of their virtual identities, encounters over the and also actively encourages them to telephone, she imagine, if not identify with, the lifestyles of the racialised white American middle-class, impersonation enables call centre employees to engage in a process of self-fashioning. The impersonation through which citizen-consumers produced at the intersection of fantasy, the market, and the state shape their identities is predicated on disavowing their everyday material realities while simultaneously buying into the phantasmic promise of globality.

Dancing on Glass offered very different fare. It stages the embodied disorientations experienced by over- worked third-world employees, working through the night to service first-world American consumers. The title reinforces this point by calling

Jisha Menon - Dancing on Glass must also contend with the challenges migrant hopelessly infatuated with of working through the night. The her. The play explores class- and nocturnal working hours produce gender-related tensions within the city resultant ailments: she develops a skin between lower-middle class male disorder from lack of exposure to the migrants and their more ‘liberal’ and sun, and her hormones act up because urbane middle-class female of her irregular sleep patterns. But it is counterparts. It charts the gradual the death of her lover, Pradeep, a prohibitions of freedoms as the fellow call centre employee, that finally protagonist loses her sense of sexual, precipitates her descent into despair. social and personal freedom. Dancing On his way home, Pradeep, sleep- on Glass pivots around this disjuncture deprived and disoriented, crashes to between liberty and liberalisation. his death after he falls asleep behind the wheel. She attempts to cope with The play opens with a her grief by turning to Pradeep’s conversation between Megan and a roommate, Shankar, a small-town hostile American customer on the 81 ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 5, Number 1

other end. The customer demands to In an interview the playwright know her real identity, and then hurls Ram Ganesh Kamatham told me his a stream of invectives at her for taking motivation for writing the play was to his job. The opening immediately sets offer a micro-political look at the the context of social and economic disruptions that global capital has anxieties about the flight of American produced in individual lives. In his jobs to India and China among other words, “With a macro-global places. The rage and panic in the voice perspective and its accompanying of the American on the other end of liberal humanist rhetoric, real issues the phone signals that it is not merely are often glossed over, and these real his job that the faceless Indian woman issues are seen directly around us— has usurped but more importantly, his infrastructure unable to cope with an entitlements as an American citizen, exploding population, a spate of new his American dream, his very sense of physical/mental disorders that our self. healthcare is not yet equipped to deal

82 Jisha Menon - Dancing on Glass with, a massive attack on our sense of ways in which these realities are identity and culture…This play takes embodied and inhabited on the the micro-local or ‘on ground’ position, ground that is at the heart of experiencing the trauma of this change Kamatham’s play. Dancing on Glass is a in an immediate way via a human grim reminder of the dangers of relationship that struggles to cope uncritically embracing the buoyant with this drastic lifestyle change, rhetorics of neoliberal globalisation. emotional alienation and fragmented Kamatham demonstrates, at the level identity.” of the all too mortal body, the material perils of buying into a disembodied It is this disarticulation between discourse of globality. the discourse on globalisation and the

83 About IFA

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An IFA Publication An IFA Publication Volume 5, Number 1 January-June 2011 Volume 5 Number 1 January-June 2011

Contents Volume 5, Number 1 Rs.100 EDITORIAL Special Issue on the Performing Arts 3

PHYSICAL TEXT: CREATING THE AUTONOMOUS ACTOR Sankar Venkateswaran 6

DASTANGOI: CONJURING UP THE ANCIENT WIZARDS OF STORYTELLING Mahmood Farooqui 20 ArtConnect

THE GATI RESIDENCY: NURTURING NEW VOICES IN CHOREOGRAPHY Anusha Lall 32

THE RISALO: POETRY IN PERFORMANCE Shalini Panjabi 48

Reviews

BEAUTIFUL THING 1: EXPLORING GENDER AND GEOMETRIES January-June 2011 Parvathi Nayar 60

ALLADEEN AND DANCING ON GLASS: TWO WAYS OF LOOKING AT GLOBALITY Jisha Menon 74

India Foundation for the Arts ‘Apurva’ Ground Floor, No 259, 4th Cross Raj Mahal Vilas IInd Stage, IInd Block, Bangalore-560 094 Phone/Fax: 91- 80 - 2341 4681/82 Email: [email protected] www.indiaifa.org