Learning Differently With Traditional Art Practices

Our performing arts institution is located in a rapidly urbanizing area, south east of Bangalore.  The area has transformed from rural to semi-urban in less than ten years.  Semi-urban, because the civic infrastructure is poor and cultural and community commons are virtually non-existent.  I moved into this neighborhood five years ago and Antara began in an effort to bring artists to a community that had no access to any formal spaces for artistic practices.   For most urban middle-class children dance and music learning is accessed through out-of-school learning.  Majority of them do not pursue this learning beyond school age and these classes are generally the only formal arts-education they receive in their lifetime. 

We began with a commitment to traditional South Asian art practices (Odissi, Kathak, Bharatanatyam, Hindustani and Karnatic Music).   

What do these art practices bring us that conventional learning does not?

We believe that traditional artistic practices offer a range of benefits, helping one to form connections between:

·         concept and movement (or sound)

·         the physical and the ideal

·         reality and imagination

·         action and thought

·         most importantly, body and mind. 

Many young students who come to learn from us experience for the first time the connection between the living body and the lived body.  That is, they experience that the BODY not just the mind, is a SITE OF LEARNING.  Through their bodies they not only learn movement but also music, rhythm, history and myth.  Through reflective exercises of writing and other forms of expression that the students engage in as part of their dance training, we began to realize the depth of student’s experiences.

Traditional art practices taught at Antara serve as tools for embodied learning which are not normally offered in conventional education systems:

Conventional methods approach learning as:	Embodied practice at Antara, approach learning as:
teacher-centered, focused on external goals or student-centred and skill focused	developmental progression that happens with the beginning of inner awareness and moving towards an interaction with the outside world
mind focused and teach how to be outwardly organized	body-focused and teach how to be inwardly organized

An example of embodied learning practice at Antara:

Poornima Dahale, Odissi instructor at Antara is holding a 10-day intensive workshop for beginners.  Her classes include reflective exercises of the mind and deep relaxation practices.  In the open garden space at Antara, students are experiencing their bodies in a wholly different way.   The pictures say more than words can.

Poornima says

“I believe letting go of all stress, relaxing and enjoying works wonders vs. forcing, controlling and torturing your body.

I do not believe in mind over body theory. Body and mind work hand in hand. Both influence each other and guide each other. Body has its own wisdom and  it is constantly guiding us ,only if we could listen.

My journey is to find ways to share my love and passion for Odissi but with a more holistic and joyful approach. I try to learn from various forms of bodily practices and bring the most suitable lessons I learn into my own practice and sharing.”

Demystifying Devadasis, Demystifying Dance

Today almost three generations down from the nationalist movement, Devadasis are thought of as extinct and are recalled as people from the past. They are remembered either as auspicious women who were victimized by the society or as overly sexualized people who with their excessive sexual instincts were propagating a lifestyle which was regressive to the ideals and the growth of Indian society. Stigmatized as a community with regressive ideals, they were alienated from their own art.  These are not imaginings and ideas that are founded on material history of the Devadasi community but are certain tropes that were created as a result of the political agenda and interests of various people during the nationalist movement. Sadly, these tropes become the reference points of their history, to which they trace their present identities. These tropes are so dominant in the imagination of the people and the Devadasis themselves that, to uproot it, one has to delve historically into the complexities of their lives. One has to trace, not only linearly but dialectically to get some insight into the trajectory of events that unfolded in the history of Devadasis – the people and the practice. 

The Devadasis of the present day themselves have to invoke ‘artificial’ memories of their pasts that are constructed politically in order to make sense of their identity. Since Devadasis are portrayed in such opposing images of sexual exploitation on one hand and glorious artists on the other, they pose a problem of category. The Marxists interpret them as exploited labourers with no agency while some nationalists consider them as the keepers of the culture and the tradition of the country through their art and practice of dance. It is required, for us to articulate the past of the Devadasis differently to render their present identity, a historical reference and not vulgarly reductive and politically motivated stereotype. In order to open up multiple yet not skewed imagination of Devadasis, it is needed that we explore the social reality of the Devadasis in the previous centuries in India. To recount and account for historiographies exploring the subjectivities of the Devadasis who were common place is the need of the day and not just that of the few iconic and exceptional ones. A larger number of Devadasis are the ones whose voices were drowned in the loud commotion of the Nationalist movement with the grand agenda of reformation of the whole country.

Historically, the many roles played by devadasis are ambiguous in their definition and are amorphous in popular memory. The term “Devadasi” itself is a problematic term which is loaded with one, singular imagination. Various regional practices collapse under the weight of this one term and the meaning it entails. Leslie Orr in her book “Donors, Devotees and daughters of god” discusses how the term “Devadasi” is barely encountered in the regional inscriptions and the scripts of the 18th and 19th century. This implies that the word is a much modern creation that reduces and consolidates various practices into one category. Books like Davesh Soneji’s “Unfinished gestures” and autobiographies of devadasis such as “Rukmini Devi- A Life” by Leela Samson and “Balasaraswathi- Her Art and Life” by Douglas Knight demystify this term “Devadasi” for us. They reawaken the eclectic lives and practices in the 19th and the 20th century that are eclipsed by this singular dominant term. “Devadasi” as a terminology, is crudely understood to mean “slave of god” or “hand-maiden of god”. Stereotypically, we tend to associate the term with the temple women who were dedicated or symbolically married to the presiding deity of the temple.

Devadasis in temple have been the perpetual and persisting stereotypical image of the Devadasis in Indian cultural imagination. Apart from being in temples they were also courtesans and street dancers. Their roles were diverse and they were not restricted to dancing and singing. The modern idea of Devadasis is largely that of dancing women in temple. It is necessary to break this one image into the variety of experiences these women went through within and outside of temple. Leslie Orr in her work traces the beginnings of the Devadasi practice in the temples to the Chola period in the 6th to 9th century. She develops and constructs this history through inscriptional and iconographical evidences on the temple walls. She also claims that in the Chola dynasty, the temple women were the patrons of the temple as well which is clearly reversed by the medieval time. Though we frequently encounter the idea that the raison d’etre of the devadasis in the temple was singing and dancing, Leslie Orr says that their roles in the society were holistic and diverse, and their lives were relevant to the on-goings of the stately affairs.

Saskia Kerseboom, author of Nitya Sumangali, recently in a talk mentioned that dance was not just formal movement. It was a yagna which had a veda. A good dance performance was important for the well-being of the state, crops, king and his subjects. Dance in today’s society seems to have lost this relevance to our lives and is perceived as something apart from the everydayness of the world. This calls us to engage with the nature of the art practice and explore the lives of the artists, to see what made them so relevant and probably what should make artists relevant to our lives and world today.

References

• Soneji Davesh, Unfinished Gestures: Devadasis, Memory and Modernity in South India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.
• Orr, Leslie C., and Leslie Orrey. Donors, devotees, and daughters of God: temple women in medieval Tamilnadu. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
•  Samson, Leela. Rukmini Devi: A Life. Penguin Books India, 2010. 
• Knight, Douglas M. Balasaraswati: Her Art and Life. Wesleyan University Press, 2010. 
• Kerseboom, Saskia “An East-West Perspective on Abhinaya”, Conference “Abhinaya in Classical Dance”, Bangalore, November 15, 2014

Javalis- Abhinaya in the 21st Century

As part of Antara’s effort to situate South Asian dancing from an aesthetic, historical and social perspective, we carry reviews and analysis of some of these embodied practices.

This week’s blogpost is by Ajay Cadambi, a graduate student at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore who studies biophysics. His interests include the history of science, temple architecture and dance history. 

Javali, Raga Atana, Roopaka Tala

In 1920, the dedication of women to temple service was banned. This was directly in response to a nation-wide agitation that viewed women associated with temples as prostitutes. In Andhra, strangely enough, the art form of hereditary female performers survived well into the 1950s, in what are referred to as salon performances or mezuvani (from the urdu word mezban which means host). Contrary to popular belief, the devadasi did not perform excluslively within the precincts of the temple. Nationalists seem to want to skew over this fact, in their reconstruction of the history of art forms like Bharatanatyam which they describe as temple-centric.

Consequently, a large number of hereditary female perfomers or sanis were disenfranchised and their art form would have altogether disappeared into oblivion if not for the efforts of a wonderful woman named Vakkalanka Swapnasundari. With the support of her Kuchipudi guru, Pasumarthy Sitaramayya, she convinced various illustrious sanis from all the three major regions of Andhra, viz. Telangana, Rayalaseema and Coastal Andhra to teach her their art. Important amongst them were Late Maddula Lakshminarayana, Late Chirutanipuram Pottigari Ranganayaki, Late Saride Anasuya and Late Golconda Bharathamma. Swapnasundari single handedly resurrected this art form and brought it to the proscenium stage.

A javali from this repertoire is presented by one of her students in the link I have pasted below.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEAp-Fmh6nQ

Unabashedly erotic, javalis are the quintessential marker of salon performances by courtesans. Soneji notes that “javalis are also signs of the volatile, sexually charged space of the salon, one that was diametrically opposed to the contained, private sexuality of the conjugal home." Like their predecessor, the padam, javalis are also tripartite and contain a pallavi (refrain), anupallavi (a sub-refrain) and charanams(stanzas). Like the padam, the narrative content of the javali is subject to multiple interpretations. The unravelling of this layered meaning through the medium of abhinaya (mime) via the use of hastas(hands) and facial movements that depict objects and ideas in multiple ways, in accordance with classical imagery associated with shringara (erotic love) is what would be expected from a good dancer.

A sani would also be expected to sing the javali in addition to performing abhinaya to it. The raga(melody) that the song is set to, the poetic devices used in the lyrics of the javali , and the tala(rhythm) enable narrative and aesthetic movement through the text. The narrator of the javali is almost always a woman and she is mostly in conversation with a patron, even if the lyrics themselves are directed towards a local representation of Krishna. The javali is always about the sexual subjectivity of the individual female performer and it is for this reason that sanis also talk of the proximities of their own lives to the narrative of the javali.

It is indeed, a rare opportunity to be able to witness elaborate abhinaya and to witness such a rare composition that is mostly unknown outside of the sani repertoire. Most of these javalis have not been documented in textual formats. There is an element of spontaneity in the performance as well which would be expected of a sani, because abhinaya was never “choregraphed” per se.  The distinctive feature of javali renditions in coastal Andhra is the gaptu-varusa, or improvised dance sequence, at the end, which apart from being exquisite in this particular rendition, undeniably marks the technical and aesthetic continuity of javali renditions in the courtesan community.

A brief description of the Javali is as follows:

The nayika is married and is trying to ward off the sexual advances of the hero. She might be doing so because she does not think highly him. He may not be a refined man for example. Or she may not want to engage with him because he has approached her at an inopportune moment and she does not wish to be caught by her husband. The dancer, Pujita Krishna Jyoti very skilfully portrays both these ideas.

“Expect nothing from me.

If my husband were to know, he will think me a cheat.

I am not like that lotus-eyed whore of yours, so these antics won't work.
I know you are only after my jewels, but I am not flattered by how handsome you are.

I can only tell smooth talkers like you to get lost.
Don't ask for things you can't have (like the moon).

I am appalled that you aren't even the least bit coy at approaching someone as exquisite as I.

Go away!”

 Reference:

- Soneji Davesh, Unfinished Gestures: Devadasis, Memory and Modernity in South India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.

Odissi Intensive Workshop for Beginners at Antara (21st December to 30th December)

Syllabus for Odissi Intensive workshop for beginners

-Prayers/Shloka

-Bhumi Pranam

- Exercises/warm ups  for Odissi dance

-Odissi stances

-Basic steps - 10 nos. ( 5 in each chowka and Tribhangi stance)

-Odissi walk

-Turns in odissi 2 nos.

-Hasta bheda or hand gestures

-Paad bheda or feet positions

-Ektaal in odissi writing and reciting

-Stretches and cool downs / relaxations

-Watch some videos together

- Short introduction on history of odissi dance

-Discuss/ share your experiences, doubts and difficulties with other participants and  instructor

Key takeaways

- A good understanding of  basics in odissi

-Learn to appreciate Odissi

-Explore the possibilities of your body

-Get video recordings for self practice

- Sweat a lot and shed a few pounds  :D

Facilitator /Instructor - Poornima

Is a disciple of guru Jhelum Paranjape (Mumbai) for over 20 years and is blessed to have some training from the legendary guru Padmavibhushan Kelucharan Mohapatra. Trained at Nrityagram for a year, she has performed extensively with Guru Jhelum Paranjape all over country. She has also been faculty at Smitalay for 2 yrs. She likes to focus on clarity in understanding and physical practice.

Poornima-From a students’ perspective

Learning dance under Poornima is a rare experience in the world of classical dances today. Despite the work out that the classes involve, it has an after effect of peace and agility. One feels relaxed and active more than tired and inadequate after the classes and is often left with a desire to come back to the practice space in the following week. By sharing with us what she learns from other forms of practice into Odissi space, she cultivates a healthy attitude towards bodily activities in general and encourages an open-mindedness to learn from all forms. My time in the dance class is the loveliest time I have spent with myself and my body. 

Timings

Batch 1: 10.00 A.M. to 12.30 P.M

Batch 2: 5.00 P.M. to 7.00 P.M.

(Limited Seats Available).

"On the State of Puppet Theatre in India"- A Talk by Anurupa Roy

(This talk was organized by Antara Artists Collective Trust along with Abstract Art Gallery in Bangalore.)

As traffic hummed with a post-lunch drowsiness on this Monday afternoon, a few people in the city, were making enthusiastic entries into Abstract Art Gallery to participate in a talk on the state of puppet theatre in India. Anurupa Roy, animated the silent afternoon with her passionate and critical perspective on the pervading imagination of puppetry in Indian society. Puppetry, she said, is fundamentally an art of bringing life to that which is inanimate.  It is this nature of puppeteer’s work that makes it a distinguished performing art, (she quickly demonstrated by making a couple of shoes speak). A theatre director brings characters and stories to life through human beings but a puppeteer labours to bring characters and stories to life through the medium of silent objects. Their art is to make silent objects speak through the literary devices of suggestions and metaphors. Movement (or stillness) is one of the basic phenomenon that “animating” depends on. Therefore, to make movements meaningful and suggestive one has to understand them. It becomes important for a puppeteer to observe and understand how her own body movements emote in order to emote correctly through the bodies of the puppets. This art of bringing silent objects to life is done in a way such that, the willing suspension of disbelief occurs as a double layered process in the mind of a puppetry audience.

1

       1. The audience has to suspend the belief that puppets are not real characters (which also happens in regular theater. 

       2.The audience has to suspend the belief that puppets are dead objects (which is specific to puppetry)

Thus, by offering a twice alienated perspective of reality to the audience, a puppeteer actually brings them that much closer to reality. Ironically this art that gives life to the lifeless is framed as a dying art. Anurupa insisted that we locate where this idiom of “dying art” is being generated. Largely, we can attribute it to be a state created phenomenon where with the advent of modernism, something monumental called the Indian culture was perceived to be disappearing and endangered.  Jammed between those whole held that Indian culture has to be revived and those who held that it has to be refined, Indian culture was definitely not to be left alone. Puppetry being a part of the Indian culture, like other art forms, came to bear the impact of India’s great nation building project. But what happened in the name of state’s divine intervention to save the arts is tragic. Especially in the case of Odissi shadow puppetry, state intervention actually endangered puppetry art by trying to refine it. In a lot of other cases, puppets from being objects of performance, withdrew into glass cases to become objects of preservation

However, apart from the Odissi context, puppetry as an art practice is not endangered. What is endangered are the narratives that were performed. In a span of two generations the stories that a puppeteer would know has shrunk from 30,000 to 3,000. One can even compare and contrast the trajectory of puppetry with the trajectory of dance where “refinement” of certain dance forms lead to loss of variety in practices. Anurupa drew attention to the fact that there has been no census of puppet theatre in India for 30 years reflecting the hollowness of the claim that puppetry is a dying art.

In the contemporary context this “save the art”, idiom has taken the form of not just state intervention but also the form of well wishing corporates. A lot of capitalist firms bring art onto the stage in urban spaces under the tag of “folk art”. Dislocated from their contexts these art forms do not fit properly within the fabric of an urban society.  Due to this mismatch and lack of being able to make sense of this art in a relevant way, people are prompted to reaffirm it as “folk”. According to Annapurna Garimella (one of the participants and an art historian), any kind of engagement with puppetry (and other arts) within the system of capitalism gets framed either as paternalistic (saving the art form) or as developmental (bringing this art into urban spaces is good for the development of society). In either of the instances the relationship between the artist and the state/organization is unequal. It creates an illusionary relationship where one is doing a favour for another. Having problematized bringing puppetry into urban spaces does not imply that one has to necessarily visit the rural spaces or villages to experience and appreciate the art form in its “true” context. These art forms must be taught and practiced in urban spaces as well but not in a way that simply mimics and dislocates the art but in a way that is well contextualized to the changing needs and ways of the society.

The solution to salvage puppetry from all these pervading stereotypes and imagination is to bring criticality to the practice of puppetry. It is in this context that Anurupa situated her vision to start a school of puppet theatre where she intends to build a troupe of puppeteers who can critically engage with the practice of this art form. It is required for such schools to be built in our society because an individual, who does not belong to a puppeteer family, who is interested in doing puppetry has no organization to associate herself/himself with. Such people have to either be self-taught or join a school abroad where puppetry is taught systematically.  Largely a self-taught puppeteer, Anurupa had to travel a lot to different places to watch and learn the craft of puppetry. These experiences and perceptions will be the mud and bricks of the school she wishes to build. Contextualizing her dream she gave people more clarity to perceive it as a rising vision amidst all the stereotypes, policies, politics and the ideologies surrounding the art of puppetry.

Summary of Talks at Antara

(This talk was organized as an initiation of critical dialogue on arts at Antara)

Thursday morning at Antara saw a dozen of people warming themselves and each other up with chai and conversations, slowly tuning the air into a talk mode. Aparna Banerji was soon giving the introduction, kick-starting the monthly series of talk for critical engagement in performance and other arts at Antara. She located the event in the larger context of Antara’s objective to be a forum which is not limited within the academic circles, encouraging the participation of the academicians, practitioners and the general population alike.

The first speaker, Sammitha, a research affiliate at Antara, engaged with those nodes where the philosophical and the cultural in her research intersect. Drawing on the age-old aesthetic debate between form and expression, she articulated the limitations of perceiving dance as a purely formalistic art form. Dance, according to her, cannot exist but in its practice and performance. While as a theory, formalism has been tackled and exposed, a large part of dance-teaching in contemporary India treats dance formalistically as it has become very prescriptive and text book dependent. This formalistic understanding of dance flourished in post-independent India when dance became institutionalized. For correcting this over-formalistic perception of dance, she proposed that we explore that culture of India which was deeply oral and performative. The absence of the “written word”, encouraging criticality in practice. Hence, apart from practicing dance she is engaging with aesthetic concepts from Indian tradition of thought such as Nrtta, Bandha and Anibandha as potential substitutes of Western formalism.

Vivek Vijayakumaran, the second speaker, journeyed us through his intellectual and an emotional life as an actor. His story embodied his philosophy, slowly revealing to us the continuous interiority of an acting-self despite taking on different roles. The modern - urban “self” became the locus of his story as he recounted his experiences of learning traditional Kudiyattam in Kerala (near Trissur) and taking acting classes from Kanhaiyalalji in Manipur.  Through these experiences he explored his body as a repository of memory as he gave us vivid descriptions of the changes he underwent psychologically while he learnt and practiced various bodily exercises. While speaking about extrapolating the criticality built in these traditional art forms into contemporary theatre practices, he held the ritual of surrender of “self” in these art forms as a critical practice for himself. The talk ended with discussions and sharing experiences of the ritual of surrender in different dance practices and in other performing arts.

Aparna, the final speaker, tied up the event by pulling strands from both the previous talks. While she  insightfully articulated the history of dance in general and Odissi in specific, she also spoke of body as a site of knowledge, memory and heritage. Dance is not simply moving bodies but is a “culturally structured moving system”. For Aparna, the weight of history that a dancer’s body silently bears is one of the many aspects embodied in a dancing subject. She spoke of the dancer’s body as a many-layered subject which is simultaneously a recording, transmitting, reflecting, performing and a miming body.  Drawing the historical and the practicing aspects of dance together she focused on the need to develop pedagogical techniques that nurtures a reflexive attitude towards understanding one’s history and also one’s own body as a multi-faceted system.

These talks triggered varied responses in the audience as they honestly expressed their opinions that were shaped through their mode of interaction with performing arts. As the gathering dispersed, everyone carried a piece of the event as a potential beginning of meaningful dialogues on critical practice and theory in performing arts. As far as Antara is concerned, this event is the beginning of what will soon culminate to be a monthly event of critical dialogue and discussion. 

Antara - Redefining a Dance Space

Tucked away in the corner of the city, Antara is a world of its own. Antara Artists’ Collective Trust, is a dance community, made up of teachers, students and is open for anyone who is passionate about dance. Kathak, Odissi, Bharathanatyam, Violin, Tabla, Sitar, Hindustani vocal and Carnatic vocal are traditional art forms taught in Antara. In this urban-Indian society, where becoming a classical dancer is so formulaic, Antara gives us a unique perspective on dance and what it is to be a dancer. To become a classical dance artist, in today’s society is a matter of learning the syllabus and passing the junior, senior and vidvat exams.  

“Syllabusizing” dance and having huge productions and performances in enormous auditorium is not a thing here. At Antara, performances take the form of sunset baithaks in the glow of oil lamps. During performances, the audience and the artists share an intimate time and space so that appreciation happens at a deeper, face-to-face level. Without making a display of dance by evoking the idiom of “preservation of Indian culture”, Antara nurtures dance-form as a vital bodily practice. This keeps the art functional, alive and relevant without deadening it into a historical artefact. For people of this community, dance is fundamentally a practice and the objective is to internalize it as a bodily and reflexive activity into their day-to-day lives. Aparna Uppaluri Banerjee, who is the founder of Antara and an Odissi dance teacher says, “What matters is the depth of experience. Lot of people who come here need not wish to become long-term artists but in whatever time they spend here, it is important that they find a new relationship with themselves through dance.”

Young children use their mind and body alike in the learning sessions reflecting the coexistence of practice and theory. While they learn to gain control over their bodily movements, they are also encouraged to articulate it.  It is heart-warming to read their small yet tremendously thoughtful essays about how they feel and think about dance practice. An eleven year old student, Sakshi writes to her Aparna aunty, “You might usually feel that your mind is the master and can make your body do whatever it wants to. But that isn’t true. If your body would not exist your mind would not exist. Your mind is the one who makes you stressed out, angry, unhappy etc., but your body does nothing it’s just there. It teaches us to be. So, when your mind gives instructions to your body, give your body the freedom to think and explain to the mind too.” Apart from the dialogues and discussions, Antara houses a library with handpicked books on traditional arts in order to facilitate serious theoretical pursuits.

However, by simultaneously being a classical dance school and a radical space for kinesthetic exploration, Antara faces its share of struggles. Teaching the classical arts, having small traditional crafts exhibitions are some of its main livelihood sources. This is precisely the cause that Antara is motivated by - to create a forum for teachers, students and enthusiasts alike by bringing them together and offering a space to support meaningful learning. To stay true to its cause and to keep away from corporate overheads and banners involves commitment from all its members. The people working here to keep the place alive, reflect the emotional and intellectual bonding that they have with each other and the space.  Subverting the dominant employer-employee relationship, Antara is a family set-up where the spirit is that of give and take. Moreover, it is through daily activities like having lunch together and serving each other that Antara thrives like a family. Due to their sustained efforts Antara is growing now. Nevertheless, they make sure that they flow with their own definition of growth, constantly struggling against the tide of profit and display. 

Hello Folks!

Antara Blog is a space dedicated to the arts and culture of South Asia. We encourage perspectives  on arts and culture from the world of practitioners, artists, researchers, lay people and initiate dialogue between them.

Enjoy your first post!