 |
|
Kuchipudi
seminar on 'Tradition - Transition - Transformation'
November 5,
2008
Day 1 saw a
short film on Yamini Krishnamurti followed by an invocation dance by students
of Saila Sudha. "Expression of our creativity into tangible creations becomes
an art. In every traditional style, metamorphosis is taking place. I dedicate
this seminar to my foster mother Vimala Natesan whose care has made me
what I am today," said Sailaja, director of Saila Sudha, in her welcome
address.
Trained in the 3 dance forms of Kuchipudi, Bharatanatyam and Odissi, Yamini Krishnamurti, hailed as a dance icon, started her Nritya Kaustuba school in Delhi 4 decades ago. She delivered the keynote address. "Tradition, transition and transformation are an integral part of human activities, especially art. One needs a lot of courage to bring out transformation without disturbing tradition. Kuchipudi traces its origin way back to 16th century. Saint Narayana Teertha taught Krishna items to Siddendra Yogi. Muvva Kshetrayya contributed to abhinaya. Male dominated art faded into near oblivion till women were allowed to perform. When Vedantam Lakshminarayana Sastri taught Dasavataram, I got hooked to Kuchupidi. Even in the early 60's, people thought Kuchipudi was a koothu or filmy type of dance. So my work was uphill. I performed extensively in India and abroad and popularized the dance form. In fact, I could say my contribution is extensive. Young people nowadays are doing well. It is unbelievable that in USA alone, there are nearly 1500 Kuchipudi dance schools. The children in USA have imbibed western culture with our Asian traditions." In his inaugural
address, the Governor said that all great countries have an art tradition
and India is multi-lingual with a diverse art tradition. Music is in sound,
painting in color and dance in movement. We find reference to dance even
in the Rig Veda. Arjuna was employed as a teacher of music and dance. "When
I was Governor of Andhra Pradesh, I attended a mela at Vishakapatnam. When
I was told that Kachipudi originated in Kachipudi village, I visited it.
Like all Indian art forms, Kachipudi has also gone into transformation."
Through out his speech, the Governor referred to the dance form as 'Kachipudi'!
Music composer
P Sangeetha Rao was born in Kuchipudi village on Nov 7, 1920 and hails
from a family of musicians. He learnt veena and violin and gave his first
solo concert at the age of 18. He has been associated with Kuchipudi Art
Academy from 1973 and is much sought after for his literary and music knowledge.
He said that his main inspiration came from melodies of Kshetrayya and
Thyagaraja.
Day 2 started with Chairperson Sonal Mansingh's observations. The tangible aspect of dance in India is the clothes, jewellery and visual aspect. The intangible is conceived of as a symbol of learning, teaching what creation is about, what life is about and so on. It is full of metaphors, epiphanies, like the ever flowing Ganga and constant transition is part of it. How do you pinpoint a transformation? Does a dancer's imagination transform into something? If the transition of tradition is not constant, meaningful and imbued with constant energy, it will remain stagnant. Dance sometimes makes a third and fourth dimension (spiritual) visible. It is transformation, like Balasaraswati's portrayal of "Krishna Nee Begane…" Every guru, every scholar has spoken about it. "Vedantam Radheshyam hails from a traditional background. One may miss him in a crowd, but last night on stage, he acted, spoke, danced and sang and the whole place vibrated. I was mesmerized. He was all encompassing. He held the stage on his own. He presented a traditional play, but there was constant transition in his tradition and that's transformation. He is not only a performer but becomes the dance itself," said Mansingh to thunderous applause. Next to speak was Sailaja. For a long time Kuchipudi stuck to tradition, but in the last 70 years, there's been a tremendous transition and transformation. The group works transformed to solo items, there were changes in the structure of dance dramas, usage of ragas. With the advent of solo items, new items introduced were padams, javalis and thillanas which were hitherto unknown. Changes in choreography techniques, admission of women into a male dominion, male oriented female dance and vice versa came into being. Transition is an ongoing process. The 1930s is an important time for all dance forms in the country. All the educated in India and overseas took to dance. There was a silent revolution by 2 gurus of Kuchipudi - Tadepalli Periah Sastri and Vedantam Lakshminarayana Sastri. The dance drama artistes of the Kuchipudi school felt the need to perform solo and not only in group in the dance drama tradition. The patra pravesha of Krishna, an important solo in the Kuchipudi style, is an amalgamation of TTT. By tradition, it is a solo dance item in the initial period. In the transition phase, female dancers portrayed the male character. Though these items were adopted as solo items, they were initially fractured pieces taken from the dance drama repertoire and reflected the thirst of dancers who wanted to perform solo. They started to look for mythological themes and madhura bhakti – from works of Narayana Theertha, Jayadeva, different types of Shabdams etc. Dr. Arudra thinks Shabdams came from Melattur to Kuchipudi, but Dr. Pappu Venugopal Rao thinks diametrically. In the 1930s, Tadepalli Periah Sastri and Lakshminarayana Sastri brought in great changes. The latter brought in female dancers and widened the repertoire of solo items, which have become part of the Kuchipudi repertoire today. Chinta Krishnamurthy enhanced the quality of music by recording major Kuchipudi compositions with stalwarts of the time. The 30s to 50s should be considered transition from tradition. Tarangam is not gender specific and is a great leap in the Kuchipudi style. Like the Varnam in the Bharatanatyam style, Tarangam is the main item in Kuchipudi. It is from the Krishna Leela Tarangini. There is a misconception that the plate dance is Tarangam. Deviating from tradition, Vempatti Chinna Sathyam has contributed immensely to the transition of the style. Prose dialogues were removed, new ragas, new themes, costumes and background design were adopted. Only 25 ragas were used earlier but now new ragas like Hamsanandi are used. Slokas have been incorporated as prelude to songs or as separate items. Instead of classical Telugu, common spoken Telugu was brought in. Vempatti Chinna Sathyam enriched the solo items repertoire that is here to stay. We also have the solo debut or rangapravesham in Kuchipudi. These are all efficient innovations without damaging the traditional. Sailaja interspersed
her lucid talk with demos of Rukmini pravesham choreographed by guru Vempatti
Chinna Sathyam, Manduka Shabdam, Balagopala tarangam and a Swati Thirunal
kriti "Shankara Srigiri…" that incorporated the plate dance. She
was accompanied by Mosalikanti Kishore on nattuvangam, Randhini on vocal,
Ramshankar Babu on mridangam, Sikkil Balasubramaniam on violin and Ramana
on flute.
There are wonderful solo performers like Swapnasundari and Vyjayanthi Kashi, brilliant duos like Radha-Raja Reddy, Jayarama Rao-Vanashri Rao, Shoba Naidu and Kamdev at their point in time. In the past, we had primarily mythological and Vaishnavite themes and a few tarangams. We now have varied pieces and thematic productions. Chinta Krishnamurthy first presented Ashtapadi. Radha-Raja Reddy presented duet of "Kuru yadu nandana…" and literary pieces in different languages got included like Brij, Mythili and Awadhi. Sometimes a production is multi-lingual, like Swapnasundari's 'Ramachandrika' and Vyjayanthi Kashi's 'Amba' in 3 languages. Anupama herself has presented 'Bhakti Sandhya' on 22 poets of the Bhakti movement. Raja Reddy presented English verses of Abdul Kalam and Uma Rama Rao has presented a dance drama on Thanjavur King Shahaji's prabandhams. Non Hindu themes like Buddhist theme of 'Chandalika' was pioneered by Vempatti Chinna Sathyam, differently by Swapnasundari and her mother in 'Amrapali' and 'Manimekala.' Vedantam Ramalinga Sastry presented a show on life of Buddha, on life of Christ; historical themes like Lakkuma Devi was presented by Alekhya. Social themes include women oriented subjects, woman empowerment, national integration themes, patriotic themes, on personalities like Vivekananda and Shirdi Saibaba, abstract themes like one on vegetable dyes by Deepika Reddy. There are elements of Kuchipudi in the productions of Mallika Sarabhai. Kuchipudi is performed as a jugalbandhi with another style, or even in a 4 style presentation like in 'Sri Krishna Parijatam' a few years back. Rasa Leela has been performed in various styles. Importance
of modern day techniques is seen in Vempatti Chinna Sathyam's 'Haravilasam,'
one of the earliest representation of theatrical element; elaborate sets
and lighting of Swapnasundari's 'Om Shakti'; extensive use of stage lights
and sets in Hema Malini's 'Durga'; use of western music in Yamini Reddy's
'Harmony' to name a few. Though lot of stress is given to stage settings
and light design, Kuchipudi is still more traditional than modern. There's
also fusion of modern theatre and dance like Vyjayanthi Kashi's 'Sarmishta,'
'Stabdha' and 'Srishti.' There was an audio visual representation of Golla
Kalapam in Hyderabad with comparison to gynecology, by Bhagavatula Sethuram.
Kuchipudi was taught in the guru-shishya parampara like Chinta, Vedantam and Vempatti families. Each family specialized in certain items / aspects of Kuchipudi. Now we have a systematic codified methodology in University for preparing the body, voice modulation and there's even a paper on world dance. Anupama demonstrated to recorded music, how she used Hindustani and Carnatic music in a Ramayana production and changes in the use of a dupatta transformed her into different characters. For Vyjayanthi Kashi, transformation is a journey, internal journey, a search, a quest, love and much more. It's an eternal process. This transformation is happening all around us - Birju Maharaj in Kathak, Kelucharan Mohapatra in Odissi and Rukmini Devi in Bharatanatyam transformed life around us. "By association with my gurus, from my lessons and work, I thank my gurus for igniting the fire of truth and excellence in me. Without a good background in technique, it is not possible to transform. Transformation is not just using different languages, it's the agni within." Being a Kannadiga,
it was difficult for her as the Kuchipudi repertoire was in Telugu, there
was no one to write scripts for her, so she had to learn on her own as
her teachers were not always present with her. Agni has always fascinated
her so she took the 5 facets of agni as the theme for her production. Vyjayanthi
gave a brief demo to Vedic chants – one of the rich heritage imbibed from
her gurus - from her production 'Agni.'
Initially she used to present Bharatanatyam and Odissi juxtaposed (dwivarna). Alarippu of Bharatanatyam, sthayi of Odissi…the whole repertory was built on this concept. "The confluence at Prayag, where Saraswati is invisible, Ganga and Yamuna are two different colors but flow as one…that for me is confluence," said Sonal. Confluence of idea and interpretation is important, the standing or posture of a style is unimportant. If you do an item on Krishna, the idea of Krishna should come through. She spoke about her mentor Jiwan Pani and the wonderful art form of Pala - Orissa's 400 year old folk theatre form. Sonal presented Sukuntala (she who has beautiful hair), the choreography based on Lord Brahma decorating the hair of the first lady of the Universe and how the peacock thought he was more beautiful than the blue black hair of woman! The audience loved it! Yamini Krishnamurti
obliged the audience by doing a small abhinaya piece. Bala Kondala Rao
came on stage and sang "Yaduvamsa sudhaambudhi…" and the Chennai audience
got the rare opportunity to enjoy Yamini Krishnamurti's brilliant abhinaya.
"Bala once said, 'They call it karanas. So many poses of Shiva but I never
saw Shiva anywhere.' All forms are themselves an amalgamation of various
forms. The forms are all there, all set. The rasa is the response
of the dancer. Only then does she achieve. Do whatever you do with passion
and the love of it," said Yamini.
Since Nandini
Ramani could not be present, her paper was read out and a video clip of
Nandini's performance of "Mohamaana…" was screened. Since the time was
already well past 2.30pm, most of the hungry audience had left.
While the seminar
sessions were undoubtedly interesting, they were too lengthy because of
too many speakers. Q & A are a vital part of seminars, but was totally
missing here, maybe due to time constraints. Since Sailaja plans
to make this an annual feature, perhaps these drawbacks could be avoided
next year. That apart, the festival was well organised, had a good, friendly
atmosphere, and the announcements made by Roja Kannan were neat and to
the point. The Chennai dancers were conspicuous by their absence.
Lalitha
Venkat is the content editor of www.narthaki.com
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
