MIRRORS
Location: Tamil Nadu - India - Asia
Project: Murai - the right to perform
Ambassador: Saskia Kersenboom
MIRRORS
History is NOT a thing of the past; it rather tends to confront us with our own imagination of \"what happened\". \'Classical Indian Dance\' is one such mirror in the face of modern India. While presenting itself to the outside a pretty picture appears of the coy, docile ever smiling young girl, like the anonymous Bharata Natyam dancer that Theatre Embassy chose for this Blog. While looking \'inside\', behind the stage of the Tourist office, the mirror produces many other pictures that turn, twist and throb like a mock reflection.
This week has been full of encounters with hereditary artists, with creative research/ reconstruction, with embarassing appropriation and with young students of dance eager to find their artistic identity. Whom did i meet? An amazing variety of dancers, musicians and historians each with their own motivation. The first performance was stunning in its emotional commitment: a solo, female dancer who fulfilled her dream on stage: once upon a time a boy, not comfortable in his/her own body, this dancer underwent a crucial gender operation that once and for all confirmed her female identity. I have rarely seen anyone dancing with such fervor and genuine outpouring of the heart. Next was another deeply felt performance. Then, the Indian, Canadian team of \"InDance\": dancers Shrividya, Hari, dance master/ researcher Devesh and designer Rex, were trained in India by one of the last Devadasi Choreographers, Shri Kittappa Pillai from Tanjavur. By now settled in Canada and teaching at the Universities of Toronto, Montreal and Wesleyan (USA), they returned to Southern India as often as possible to study with devadasis in Andhra Pradesh and Tamilnadu. Devesh read my work on Devadasis, called \'Nityasumangali, Devadasi Tradition in South India\' (1984), when he was 12 years old and according to him this book is one among those that changed his life. The trust that these hereditary families gave them is overwhelming, and they did not betray it. On the contrary, while in Canada they have taken up \'Reconstruction Work\' with convincing integrity. Their performances in Chennai for an international public were the best i have seen so far during this stay. A change of the public opinion about the Devadasi past can perhaps only come from \'the outside\': from solid historical research, giving a voice not only to devadasi protest and legal battles at the time, but also giving a voice and physical presence to their artistic skills, taste and erudition. These qualities shine bright in today\'s mirror. A few days, hours, and kilometers further, other, embarrassinlgy twisted images appear in the mirror of dance. Indian scholarship prides itself now in a second wave of interest in the Devadasi arts. A number of books is coming out, drafting research and artistic revival based on \'authentic sources\', mainly portraying the author in a central role. The mirror, however, cruelly repeats a deja vu: once again, hereditary artists whose livelihood has been taken away by law, transmit their knowledge to outsiders in the hope of recognition. Unfortunately, the earlier game repeats itself. While old devadasis in Andhra Pradesh are living in the margins, sinking below the level of survival, the new scholar dancers display their findings on global stages, clad in heavy silks, weighed down by golden jewellery and by now physically so overweight that the dancer can hardly move. A new asset in this theatre of reconstruction is the \'gift of abandoned temple\' where the upperclass hobby dancers can play out their devadasi fantasy while the traditional community tries to get away from its earlier image as far as possible and hurries into the safe hide-out of marraige for their daughters.
WHAT can a MURAI project do in this context? Perhaps to look out and listen for those questions and voices that try to understand the past or that try to make it into a continuous present. Two very encouraging encounters also occurred this week: at Kalakshetra, the Centre of Arts that pioneered almost a century agon, into abstracting Devadasi Arts outof its context into a new Global environment, and one at Raga Shuddha where the grandson of the devadasi veena/ lute virtuoso, Smt. T. Brinda, celebrated his gradnmothers death anniversary with music that indeed seem to emerge from another time and place but is very much alive indeed.
In today\'s Kalakshetra, the ban on devadasi aesthetic is being lifted, and an amazing openness marks the students, the lecture demonstrations and the classes that i witnessed. In a two hours exchange with these young and sensitive minds we could discuss all questions, problems and \'knots of historical misrepresentation\' that the students feel as urgent; urgent for themselves: to understand who they are, where their art comes from and what is its natural inherent strength. Here, change of public opinion gradually grows from the \'inside\'. In the vocal concert of this morning Tiruvarur Girish sang his grandmother legacy while his very young son (?), barely ten years old accompanied him on the violin. The concert lasted three hours and afterwards we were able to talk about his legacy, the padam songs, and the padams played by the musicians in the temple of Tiruvarur, his native place and our destination for the next month. The MURAI project is alive but as an undercurrent in the flashy, success story of the New India. I hope to be able to tell you more, next week -from Tiruvarur. Internet will be very difficult to access over the coming weeks. But......Somehow, things will work out. For now.... A VERY HAPPY New Year to you all,
Saskia
