Some years ago, Vinod Mehta, the then dynamic editor of Outlook magazine, told me he’d received a call from a dancer asking to be featured, and why — because she was a foreign exponent of classical Indian dance. He laughingly told her that this was no longer an anomaly as Sharon Lowen has brought foreign artists into the cultural mainstream years earlier with her Videshi Kalakar Utsavs.
The first Videshi Kalakar Utsav (Foreign Artists’ Festival), was supported by the Delhi government’s arts body, the Sahitya Kala Parishad, in 1990. Under the dynamic leadership of Surendra Mathur, a golden era for SKP, I was given a free hand and full support to visualise, organise and invite artists. This pioneering festival changed forever the idea that non-Indian practitioners of Indian classical dance and music could be students, but not “artists”. The success and vitality of this festival continued inspiring six annual festivals, each accompanied by seminars that marked the reality that Indian arts were becoming international, not only to audiences around the world but also in that the performers themselves waere coming from a wide variety of cultural origins. The concept of these festivals and seminars of art without frontiers evokes a generosity of spirit required more than ever today. In acknowledging both the truth and fact that we all share an inner reality that is reflected in art, the many facets of aesthetic expression are potentially available to all without restriction of borders and boundaries, physical or conceptual.
Artists are drawn to a particular aesthetic genre because of inner resonance with the form, which crosses boundaries of region and even nationality. The sadhana (devotion to work or practice as a means toward self-perfection) of an artist is inherently difficult and success of a performer uncertain, more so for those born outside the tradition who leave the security of their home culture to devote years of their lives to their chosen art.
Opportunities for foreigners are limited more by restricted entry into the world of performance patronage than by lack of artistic skill. As more non-Indians have been drawn to Indian classical dance in recent years, the standard has been improving. Just as many top Western classical Ballet and Modern dancers are from Asia, traditional Indian classical dance forms are becoming international as boundaries fall between borders and art. Initially, I was reluctant to go forward with a festival focusing on non-Indian artists, not because they weren’t equal to their peers, but because I had personally resisted, for decades, the evaluation of my own performance as being made upon any basis other than artistic. I came to realise that this festival, and the discussions shared in the seminars, was indeed important, if only to establish that the acceptance I had achieved need not be unique. Each year’s festival revealed one or more outstanding performances among others that were as capable as their Indian peers; each year there were more than enough promising and experienced artists to present. Especially prior to the first year’s festival, but even in subsequent years, I’d fielded the public’s recurrent doubt that, while there could be one or two rare exceptions to the “foreigner as student but never artist” assumption, there could hardly be enough videshis (foreigners) to sustain an entire festival. That doubt, I feel, has been firmly answered now by the high quality of the performers, accepted and judged on merit, on par with their peers.
The criteria for selection was foreign artists who were equal to their peers, whether Kak ke Kalakars or mature performing artists rather than “good for a foreigner”. This meant introducing artists like Malayasian Ramli Ibrahim and the Italian Ileana Citaristi in Odissi, Trinidadian Radhica Laukaran, Canadian Jai Govind and Dominique Delore from France in Bharata Natyam, Brigitte Chataignier from France in Mohiniattam among other styles and dancers.
A few of the classical musicians who made a mark were Drupad vocalist Nirmalya Dey from Bangladesh, Pt. Hari Prasad Chaurasia’s French disciple Francoise Roditi, and American Khyal vocalist. American Justin McCarthy in Bharata Natyam and Veronique Azan in Kathak were Delhi based so I would not claim to have introduced them, but was happy to feature them in the first year.
Over 50 classical dancers and musicians had the opportunity to share their work with Delhi rasikas. Performers need to share their art with an audience in order to grow. For too many, it was their first chance to have live orchestra accompaniment, let alone to perform in India. It was ground breaking of SKP in 1990-96 to support this need by classical dancers and musicians from other countries to perform in the capital city of India and it is heartwarming to see that ICCR took up this charge after an extended gap. In those years, most newspapers carried arts reviews, unlike the current practice of visual and performing arts events relegated to local social page 3 news. (The Asian Age a notable exception!) Clearly, having performance reviews from India was a great asset to the credibility of these artists when returning to their home countries. No artist was ever repeated, as the intention was to offer the opportunity to enter the mainstream and swim, not to create a separate pond. While performing artists bang on a lot of doors early in their careers, for videshis there was essentially a sold brick wall to get through, no door. These festivals were a genuine doorway to acceptance and recognition as seen in the career graphs in India and abroad of many of the artists who persevered.
It was also interesting to see the impact of these festivals on gurus of foreign students. One could clearly see results of generous gurus in the caliber of teaching by generous gurus like Muthuswamy Pillai, Sadanam Balakrishnan and Aloka Panikar among pretty much all of the gurus who had students taught to a level to be presented to Indian Rasikas. Some teachers took the training of foreign students more seriously when they understood that they might perform in India, which would reflect on the quality of their guidance. When I was a student of Manipuri at Triveni Kala Sangam and Mayurbhanj Chhau at Bhartiya Kala Kendra, I was never considered for inclusion in annual institutional end-of-year student presentations. It is a great joy and very satisfying when I attend BKK student performances to see that foreigners have now been mainstreamed as a matter of course. I could not have managed these festivals without the help of a one-man team, the multifaceted artist Naresh Kapuria who not only superbly designed the stages and arranged publicity gratis, but also organised logistics behind the scenes. We took turns meeting trains and looking after artists. SKP covered the costs of printed materials and nominal payments to artists. We took nothing beyond reimbursement for postage. A couple of individuals pressured Mathur-sahib to let them take charge, as they saw the untapped potential gold mine of getting foreign invites from each artist. Fortunately, he resisted the pressure and this remained a festival where merit was the only criteria and it was a win-win for artists and audiences.
When the Sahitya Kala Parishad sponsorship ended after Surendra Mathur’s retirement, I felt that the goals of the festivals and seminars had been achieved. The artists returned to their countries with the experience of performing for knowledgeable audiences and armed with critical reviews to further their careers at home. Teachers and gurus were conscious that their foreign students might be seen performing in India, which pleased, threatened or motivated them, depending on their prevailing attitudes to teaching non-Indians. And above all, the public had now seen that artists merited acceptance based on performance at their level of promise or maturity, not upon nationality.
In a future article, I will write about the Art Without Frontiers: Indian Arts on the Move seminar issues held in connection with the six Videshi Kalakar Utsavs (Festivals of Dance and Music by artists on non-Indian origin).
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
