Art Without Frontiers: Indian arts on the move

After the impact of the first Foreign Artists Festival/Videshi Kalakar Utsav in 1990 in establishing the idea that foreigner classical Indian dancers and musicians could perform on par with their Indian peers, the time seemed ripe to accompany the next year’s festival with a seminar. Five annual Art Without Frontiers: Indian Arts on the Move seminars followed, thanks to the dynamic secretary of Sahitya , Surendra Mathur, whose confidence in me allowed me to plan these with a free hand. They brought together artists, gurus, and performing arts scholars to reflect and engage on Indian classical performing arts specifically in the world context of presentation, performance and training. It was evident that learning these traditions in today’s milieu by students and artists from non-traditional backgrounds was not entirely dissimilar for some young Indian origin practitioners in urban environments.

Considering the performances of artists who learned their art forms after spending their formative years in another culture, initial questions included: How are they drawn to the tradition How do they enter into the tradition How does any student in modern times enter In the first year’s seminar, Pt Ravi Shankar related the story of his guru’s reaction to the first flight to moon, “so many miles up,” he had asked, “but how far down have we gone into the sea Though we haven’t gone as far down as we’ve gone high, it is much more difficult to go deep.”

We all are trying to go deep. Success depends on so many factors: inherent talent and ability, hard work and good fortune in finding the right guru, an environment and living conditions that allows one to concentrate on the art, interaction with colleagues, audiences & connoisseurs, to name a few. It is fascinating to examine how arts and artists survive and flourish under varied circumstances. Side by side it is important to thoughtfully consider how we all can responsibly further the arts using our collective capacities.

The purpose of these seminars was to create an environment for the interaction of thoughtful people to discuss issues in the arts that are relevant to everyone deeply committed to preserving, maintaining and carrying forward the traditions of classical Indian performing arts.

The first year’s seminar included sessions on cross-cultural transmission of Indian traditions, methodologies and resources for teaching abroad and to non-Indians. The second year took up issues of authenticity, followed by seminars on “The Context of Learning Classical Indian Performing Arts in Modern Times, their place in the World Cultural Community and Global Context,” resources for and experiences of non-Indian exponents, evolving and retaining philosophical and aesthetic foundations.

The experiences shared by artists pursuing the performing arts of India who had come from other cultural backgrounds was fascinating, equally so that of the gurus teaching them. Among my favorite presentations was Guru Sadanam Balakrishnan’s heartfelt simple volte face regarding his experience teaching foreigners. He started by saying “We Kerala artists generally believe foreigners cannot perform Kathakali cannot go deeply into the Gurukula system and study properly Kathakali teachers feel that foreign people don’t believe in God so there is a problem as all the Kathakali characters are drawn from the epics. Foreigners also feel that they cannot dance like Keralites and only want to learn some technique.” Yet he says he changed his teaching methods in order to train them as professional Kathakali dancers after seeing their small presentations.

Foreign disciples’ questions were difficult to answer. “Then I gradually started to discover some reasons and somehow was able to start explaining. Instead of saying, don’t speak, please just do it, no explanation! Italians Beppe Chierichetti as well as Claudia Contin have been learning and performing successfully for years. So now Italians also perform Kathaka li and we, the Kathakali connoisseurs, cannot recognize the difference in the performance by the origin of the performer. It means that they come to India, they suffer a lot and they study intensely. They always respect their teacher and the culture, so I can say that they change and they can do Kathakali.”

The core questions revolve around ideas of authenticity; what these mean in terms of living traditions that continue to grow and evolve. Raghava R. Menon, the extraordinary writer on Indian music and culture, was also a respected music critic whose lyrical accuracy always acknowledged the positive points first. His thoughts on authenticity began with the inherited perceptions, transfigured and poetic and the resulting grammar that protect the arts from the ravages of history and time. Yet he also pointed out that the grammar follows, rather than precedes the practice and that each generation gets a change to re-fertilize the grammar that the gurus teach us.

Raghava-ji develops further the idea that, in the final analysis, “knowledge of the art’s rules and inheritance, its history and authenticity” can provide a flawless, forgettable performance unless it is imbued with the self. “Is there anything in your dance which is you or is it all smiles, good manners and polite courtesies to the memory of Athai or Baba or a salaam to Guru Keluchara or Gwalior or Patiala or whatever And I do not mean innovation in dance. Without the essential substance, an innovation is only rearranging the furniture in an already ravaged room”.

This lived and not learnt need to dance, not harder but truer, must be kept in mind “so that you are constantly unhappy about any degree of phoniness, however well you dance or sing. Despite our secure technique, impeccable taste, terrific physical attributes, it is the fantasy that you are looking for, a sense of wonder that makes your art live beyond the footlights. IF you do not strive for this, your authenticity is good only for the textbooks. And yu will begin and end there.” Raghava-ji so poetically encapsulates the vast panorama of discussion into a poetic this poetic précis.

For those willing to take up the challenge, whether born in the village of the art form’s origin or hundreds, even thousands of miles away, we should respect the courage and dedication of their effort and applaud the results when sincerely merited. The heartfelt, generous transmission of art from teacher to student and performing artist to audience demands a sadhana that bears fruit for everyone involved in the process.

Sharon Lowen 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