Three incredible journeys

Recently, three senior dance rasikas shared their personal journeys; the ones that drew them into decades recording their impressions of dance. It was a pleasure listening to dance writer-critics Leela Venkataraman and Sunil Kothari wordsmith their stories along with ace photographer Avinash Pasricha curating a visual and descriptive exhibition of his photographic dance and music life.   

Venkata-raman recalled that dance, music and poetry were taken for granted as part of school and college though dance had no defined style. She first realised that there was a differentiation of training when she could not replicate the lyrical grace of a teacher trained in Manipuri. Her father’s insistence on exposure to Indian arts reflected the wonderful generational view of the educated elite spanning the mid-20th century.

One great advantage of hearing an individual life story is the weaving in and out of the formative years of others whom we regard highly. Venkataraman’s husband’s posting in Odisha took her after marriage to the land of Kala Vikash Kendra, Cuttack, Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra and a growing understanding of Odissi dance.

She delightfully recounted the AIR director, Krishnamurty’s discovering a slight boy with a tiny flute from Varanasi whose marvellous audition almost made him fall of his chair, prompted an immediate AIR position, a gift of every flute size available and the prediction of greatness.

Hariprasad Chaurasia fulfilled this and was continued to learn from AIR senior Pt Bhubaneswar Misra, composer of most of the Odissi dance repertoires. Krishnamurty similarly saw that young Kelucharan Mohapatra “had dance in his veins”.

Venkataraman is equally adept as a raconteur as with a pen. The audience of friends connected to the speakers loved hearing that when the country’s first Prime Minister Pt Nehru baulked at staying more than a few minutes for a ballet and then called for the choreographer after it ended 1-½ hours later, Kelucharan Mohapatra was a challenge to find as he was off busy making paan!

She also shared fond memories of her first foray into writing about Keshav Kothari’s superbly produced Kathak Kendra Dance Festival for The Herald, the encouragement of late Shanta Serbjeet Singh and the welcome challenge of learning while enjoying watching dance. Dr. Kapila Vatsayayan graced the event with her presence and Venkataram took the opportunity to credit her knowing anything about dance to the analysis and information gleaned from repeated reference to  books by Dr Vatsayayan who concluded with the concern regarding the dearth of young dance writers given the multitude of other options available and the minimal remuneration and space for the arts in print.

Pasricha naturally presented his lifelong passion for capturing dance and music through his camera as commentary accompaniment to a cornucopia of iconic images. Photographing dance began in 1961 on assignment to click Indrani Rahman at Sapru House for the American SPAN magazine cover though his Ektachrome 35mm film turned green and the cover photo of Indrani had to be sourced from Bombay (now Mumbai).

He grew up in his father’s photo studio on Janpath next to Connaught Place in New Delhi and was the photo editor of SPAN magazine for 37 years (1960-1997).

Pasricha attended the 1966 Vishnu Digambar Music Festival with a cousin and his camera. He pushed his black and white film to 1200 ASA to capture the mood of each artiste and enjoys it as much today as he did back then. Artists admired what he could shoot as he did their mastery and many friendships and shared meals were the result.

This Gandharva Mahavidya connection naturally led to his beginning a lifelong collaboration with the then upcoming Kathak dancer Madhavi Mudghal and Durga Lal, including famous ITDC posters and following her fulltime shift to Odissi making her hand mudras, eye movements and sculptural poses immortalised in virtually every book on India dance over decades.

One dancer Pasricha really loved was Kelubabu (Padma Vibhushan Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra) forhis total involvemet, charming naughtiness with Kalanidhi Narayan, Pt. Birju Maharaj and Girja Devi.

When he went to Madras (now Chennai) for an article in SPAN magazine on M.S Subbulakshmi, he fondly recalls she promised to make him a dosa after the photoshoot, then sang for half-an-hour, made the dosa and then continued to the terrace for more photographs. One delightful historic image showed her singing with Shekhar Sen, current SNA chairman.

These photographs, like many others of his hundreds on generations of classical performing artistes, have been well used in documentaries such as one on Kumar Gandharva and Rita Ganguly’s on Begum Akhtar.

Pasricha shared a feast of images: Rajan-Sajan Mishra with black hair, Radha and Raja Reddy over the years with their family of dancers, Yamini Krishnamurti in yellow costume photographs that have been used extensively after four rolls of film in half-an-hour hour shoot at Triveni, Ramli Ibrahim “the sexy Odissi dancer”, Charu and Singhajit Singh “still going strong”, Priti Patel “always doing something different with Manipuri”, Shovana Narayan and Uma Sharma “the enjoyment of dance”, Navtej Johar and Justin McCarthy “total involvement”,  the amazing abhinaya of Kapil Venu “sitting on stool and bringing out tears”, Arushi Mudghal, Sharmila Biswas, Anita Ratnam, Ranjabati Sircar “miss her” (I do too!), Sonal Mansingh “Sonal is Sonal”, Geeta Chandran “seen endless number of times doing new things”, Sangeet Sharma contemporary  dancer “doing a very fine job” and Nahid Siddique from London and Pakistan “grace of movement” among others.

When Pasricha commented, “Alarmel Valli hasn’t got much of a face but is 100% into her dance…”, I was rather surprised as I have always found her quite beautiful. It brought to mind something Avinash said years ago: “To succeed, a dancer must be excellent in either beauty or expression or technique, but not necessarily all the three.”

I totally agree with his remark that dance begins from the eyes, not the pose and that studio shot images tend to be static as his son told him: “You dance around the dancers in the studio”. An evocative photo essay illustrated his greenroom transformation from a bare-chested man transforming through the stages of makeup, hair, ornamentation and costume into a woman. The eyes and expression became feminised as the great artist finished braiding his hair.

Pasricha’s discovery of a way to cock the shutter of his camera while holding in the rewind button made it possible to take multiple shots on one photographic film frame. We have all seen the breathtaking results of dance in motion (Kumudini Lakhia’s troupes), captured in the air  (Manipuri Pung and Dhol Cholom dancers) and combining static with action as in the pose of Rama Vaidyanathan in front of Purana Qila with the blur of dancers moving behind.

Despite the challenge of a significant hearing loss, Pasricha and his wife “Toshi” go out every evening to enjoy the pleasure of dance and music as a form of meditation, often accompanied by his still good hand and good camera.

Kothari shared his thoughts on dance writing and his transition from a chartered accountant — as the youngest of 13 children from a Gujarati bania family — to a world-renowned dance scholar. His journey will have to be shared as a follow up article as compressing these three fascinating visions of 20th century Indian dance would not do them justice.

Sadhna Srivastava, the popular compere for dance performances besides anchoring television and stage programs orchestrated this interaction into “the vastness of their lives in dance” along with Shagun Butani, the ever lovely Seraikella Chhau and Odissi exponent. Though the younger generation they hoped would attend didn’t seem to know this was happening, everyone there thoroughly enjoyed going down the memory lane and filling in gaps of shared lives in dance.

The writer is a respected exponent of Odissi, Manipuri and Mayurbhanj and Seraikella Chau whose four-decade career in India was preceded by 17 years of modern dance and ballet in the US and an MA in dance from the University of Michigan. She can be  contacted at sharonlowen.workshop@gmail.com.