ARTS TRIBUNE Friday, June 30, 2000, Chandigarh, India
 
Vilasini Natyam — seeking acceptance
By Vandana Shukla
I
N 1936 Ramamritam Ammal published a Tamil novel “Dasigal Mosvalai Alladu Mati Pet Mainer” which meant “Trap of a Devdasi or Good Sense Prevails Over the Debauch Wealthy Man.” Writing against this practice she made many powerful enemies who did not want the practice to be abolished. Being a Devdasi herself, Ramamritam had known the structural and operational intricacies of this system too well. A self-educated woman of great calibre, she later joined politics to succeed in her mission of eradicating the Devdasi system.

by Amita Malik
Doordarshan's unsporting life

A
S I write this column, DD must be preening itself over the Euro Football. For once, the cable operator, who is a businessman first and last, gave reasonably good reception and none of those pale, fleeting images which make the viewer fiddle with the colour knob. Also, making use for once of its sports channel (after all, the triple it normally puts out at night is hardly worth the effort) there were not as many interruptions as before. It is the timing of the matches in Europe which spared Doordarshan the noose. Not that it gave everything up-to-the-minute. Doordarshan’ copyright phrase “Deferred Live” has passed into media history. It ought to make the dictionaries soon.


by Suparna Saraswati
The young and the talented
W
HO says art is for adults? Under the patronage of Chandigarh Pracheen Kala Kendra, 20 children indulged their creative instincts at an art and craft workshop held in the city recently. In keeping with its eternal commitment towards encouraging performing and visual arts within the parameters of the Indian culture and tradition, the kendra provided a host of artistic activities for the children. The workshop was divided under two groups, ‘A’ and ‘B’ supervised by Anuradha Thakur and Seema Jaitly, respectively.
 

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Vilasini Natyam — seeking acceptance
By Vandana Shukla

IN 1936 Ramamritam Ammal published a Tamil novel “Dasigal Mosvalai Alladu Mati Pet Mainer” which meant “Trap of a Devdasi or Good Sense Prevails Over the Debauch Wealthy Man.” Writing against this practice she made many powerful enemies who did not want the practice to be abolished. Being a Devdasi herself, Ramamritam had known the structural and operational intricacies of this system too well. A self-educated woman of great calibre, she later joined politics to succeed in her mission of eradicating the Devdasi system.

Swapna Sundari, renowned Bharatnatyam and Kuchipudi exponent and an intelligent erudite, modern woman turned many of her admirers into her worst critics when she tried to revive the dance of the Devdasis Vilasini Natyam, towards the end of the century.

Both women had a quest that they wanted to explore by extending their horizons — by entering another domain. In 1995, when Swapna Sundari performed this dance before a select gathering in Delhi, it created a furore. The reason critics found this dance erotic and provocative. The major reason behind this allegation was the association of this dance with the Devdasis.

Almost all classical dance forms originated in temples, as an expression of Bhakti. Later they became a strong medium for educating and entertaining the masses. All traditional arts absorbed changes and adapted to the changing needs.

Swapna Sundari’s quest began with a fundamental question: When a dance form originated in temples, was free to adapt and survive like other traditional art forms, then, why was this particular dance singled out to be given a death sentence? Why was it not given a chance to survive outside the domain of Devdasis?

This quest led her to exploring the cultural history of our temple dance forms and strengthened her conviction of securing, recording and popularising Vilasini Natyam for the future generations. She found the dance of the Devdasis both subtle and eloquent, rich in content, form, expression and aesthetics. An exquisite form of expression shaped over a 100 of years enriched by the artistic imagination of hundreds of dancers could not be allowed to go down in history as an expression of only the erotic. She says this assessment of the dance form was based on certain prejudices of the people, who do not mind watching thinly clad lissome beauties gyrating on MTV, but perceive eroticism in a fully clad dancer and her art. The problem lies in the attitude, not in the art per se.

Her quest became her compulsion. On board a train bound for the West Godavari region, where this dance form flourished, she realised she had not friends in this journey. No one wanted to get associated with her visits to sleazy joints where the remnants of this dance form still survived in the memory of some old practitioners called Kalavatis. After encountering initial failure, where even the Kalavatis refused to co-operate with an outsider, it was only late Dr Arudra, an eminent scholar of this dance form, who accompanied her to a major gathering of old exponents of Vilasini Natyam, where they were to be honoured. There, she found an old graceful woman who began to dance on an impulse. She says this dance was so different from what she had learnt and seen thus far, that she felt immediately drawn to it. The woman performing it was like a dry flower — fragile, dignified, retaining colour though without fragrance. She knew that very instant that she had found in her, her future guru. Madula Laxmi Narayana, an old exponent of Vilasini Natyam, tried and tested her level of dedication to great lengths before relenting to teach her.

This was her third Nupur Puja, performed in a temple to become a part of a great tradition—earlier ones being done for Bharatnatyam and Kuchipudi dances. Since her guru did not want to teach her in her village, where people were scandalised by the goings-on, she hired a flat in Madras and then in Hyderabad where her guru lived with her for two years and imparted knowledge on the practical aspects of performing this dance. The old guru became her practical reference point. These dancers were also accomplished singers. Since Swapna Sundari is also an accomplished singer, her acceptance and training did not suffer from lack of talent.

For her, this was an enriching experience, to know how much these women loved their art to continually refine and enrich it. Not only in terms of dance, it turned out to be a greater lesson in the sociological aspects of a society seeking new moorings. She says it depends on how one looks as it. A Devdasi was a professional with total independence, who earned her position by the virtue of her art and hard work. It was a good sociological arrangement. In her later years, she also selected a man of her choice for the purpose of progeny. She decided how long this man would live with her. And even after his death she continued to be Nitya Sumangali or eternally blessed. When she retired from active dance, she would choose of her own, the girl who would inherit her place. She was emancipated in the true sense. Perhaps, the system came to an end due to existing contradictions in the society. She has in her possession hours and hours of recorded tapes of the Devdasis that she plans to publish in the near future.

Convinced of the seriousness of her purpose in preserving and promoting this dance, Swapna refuses to dilute its form to lend it middleclass appeal — what she believes, was done to Bharatnatyam in the ’40s and ’50s to make it totally Bhakti oriented. She wants to retain totality of art by retaining the angularity of performance.

Only time will tell whether she is to Vilasini Natyam what Rukmini Devi Arundhale was to Bharatnatyam. The silver lining is that many academies have taken her work seriously. The Department of Culture has recognised it and created a new category of classical dance: Vilasini Natyam. The department also offers scholarships to willing students. Presently, she has only one student learning Vilasini Natyam, but she is optimistic. She says it took 40 to 50 years for Bharatnatyam to become popular. Her efforts are barely five years old.

Perhaps, after the initial search for a euphoric idealism in everything Western, we have begun to look for a modern meaning in our tradition. This is exactly what Swapna Sundari is doing, finding a new definition of a modern woman in the traditional setup.
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Sight & Sound
by Amita Malik
Doordarshan's unsporting life

AS I write this column, DD must be preening itself over the Euro Football. For once, the cable operator, who is a businessman first and last, gave reasonably good reception and none of those pale, fleeting images which make the viewer fiddle with the colour knob. Also, making use for once of its sports channel (after all, the triple it normally puts out at night is hardly worth the effort) there were not as many interruptions as before. It is the timing of the matches in Europe which spared Doordarshan the noose. Not that it gave everything up-to-the-minute. Doordarshan’ copyright phrase “Deferred Live” has passed into media history. It ought to make the dictionaries soon. At the moment it sounds more like a postponed death sentence.

What DD has not grasped yet, so smug is it in its government monopoly, is what exactly irks its sports-loving viewers. So let me list them one by one.

1. The interruptions and hopping from channel to channel. True, one gets reasonable reception on the Metro Channel and rather less on the National. But why should the viewer have to hop from channel to channel, have matches interrupted at the most exciting and crucial moments to be told that the rest will be shown recorded after two hours? Why should DD get the contract when it cannot provide proper continuous coverage? Now that it boasts of a 24-hour sports channel, why can it not devote it to prolonged coverage without interruptions? As far as the cable operator is concerned, he cares two hoots for the sports channel. When I ask mine why, he says DD had made two channels compulsory, we are giving the National and the Metro channel under compulsion and are under no obligation to give either the sports or the news channels. Can Mr Rajiv Ratan Shah suggest some remedies from the tyranny of the cablewallah and explain why all his channels put together cannot ensure uninterrupted viewing for the sports lower? If ESPN and Star Sports can do it, why not DD? Why not allow healthy competition, leaving the satellite viewers to other networks and DD providing terrestrial coverage for the common man?

2. The other big grouse of sports lovers is the mindless manner in which DD puts ads above the game and shoves in its advertisements at the peak of an event, cuts out analyses between overs or games, cuts out presentation ceremonies and, in the news, shows the wrong excerpts when describing an item, such as Sampras when they mean Aggasi (always mispronounced as Aah-Gaa-See). If a thing is worth doing it is worth doing well, said our teachers. Something which DD, in its arrogance, chooses to ignore. It has not yet grasped the responsibilities of public service broadcasting.

Just before writing this, I saw Star Sports’ coverage of Wimbledon. The tennis court lawns looked a heavenly green. But by the time they appeared on DD news, they were an ugly khaki. Trust DD. One dreads the semis and finals, when DD ruins everything for the viewer and remains utterly unconcerned about consumer interests and demands because they are the government, whether they admit it or not, and they care two hoots for public opinion.

A number of international events are going on at the moment. And now, every channel has got into the anything-you-can-do-I-can-do-better act. It is not just Star, Zee has also sent its correspondents to the same spots. But if I must give a prize, I unhesitatingly award it to Vikram Chandra of Star who did a first-rate job on the Hanse Kronje hearings in South Africa. He got exclusive interviews with Justice King and with the charming but, when it came to cross-examining-ruthless young lawyer, Shamila Batohi, whose ancestors came from India. He also sent top-class footage on the hearings. Chandra has been doing a sterling job of reporting and anchoring down the years for Star TV. I think this was his finest hour. On the other hand, the reporters from all channels, Star, Zee, not least of all DD, did a pedestrian and trite job of covering the PM’s foreign tour.

TAIL PIECE: The super brats of Star News have a new ally in the latest kid on the block, the prosperous looking sports reporter Rahul. He addressed distinguished, silver-haired sports editor Ayaz Memon familiarly throughout as Ayaz, as if he had attended nursery school with him. However, it is some consolation that the ever-courteous and ever elegant Prannoy Roy has returned to the news, at least when Star World took on the 9 p.m. news. Welcome back Prannoy Roy. 
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Art & Culture
by Suparna Saraswati

The young and the talented

WHO says art is for adults? Under the patronage of Chandigarh Pracheen Kala Kendra, 20 children indulged their creative instincts at an art and craft workshop held in the city recently. In keeping with its eternal commitment towards encouraging performing and visual arts within the parameters of the Indian culture and tradition, the kendra provided a host of artistic activities for the children. The workshop was divided under two groups, ‘A’ and ‘B’ supervised by Anuradha Thakur and Seema Jaitly, respectively.

To suitably engage a young child’s aesthetic curiosity is by no means a small effort. It is more like a challenge. However, the two art tutors, Anuradha and Seema, were completely taken in by the awesome response given by this growing talent of the city. Much to their amazement, the young artists were absolutely at ease with whatever medium of creation they had to handle. Especially in the case of the mural painting, all seemed to have had a field day meddling their tiny hands in a batter of chalk mitti, plaster of paris and white channas!

What was quite fascinating during the course of this art experience was the fact that each child, however, small he/she was, enjoyed every bit of the experience. It was the sheer excitement of doing something creative that exhilarated their spirits, visibly. This was most apparent on the concluding day of workshop when their efforts were displayed at Tagore Theatre in an exhibition-cum-sale of their art objects.

It was truly touching to see every child’s enthusiasm reach a pinnacle, while introducing the visitor to his/her object de art. Though the entire exhibition was rather cheerful and quite imaginative in its display, it was, however, the Kids Creative Corner that stole the show with its paper-mache masks, animal cutouts, subtle pencil sketches and neat block-designs. This section also had cardboard models of little houses with gardens and benches. The entire display table seemed like a township of colourful dwellings. Mind you, each and every resident had dutifully obeyed the environment law by planting at least one green item in their habitat.

Another interesting counter of the exhibition was the one on chalk statues, capsuled in inverted glass jars. Tender pieces of chalk were beautifully carved with a needle into colourful statuettes of men and women. As the designer of this technique Anuradha highlighted its advantage of increasing the power of concentration in a child’s creative mind. The identity of a chalk piece appears to have been artistically redefined. The rest of the sections of this art ‘n’ craft exhibition showcased handmade toys, organdy flowers, clay pots, murals and an entire range of different types of paintings.

There was also the dot and emboss style of painting followed by stained glass category and the nib painting done on black cloth using bright colours and a painting nib. Not for a moment did these art frames give the impression of being the works of some amateur and inexperienced student of art. Each of these reflected an inherent skill and talent that needed a much-desired artistic expression.

Alongside the art ‘n’ craft experiment, the kendra had also organised a month-long theatre workshop with the expertise offered by a team of three professionals from the media of performing arts namely, Munisha Mahajan, Rajesh Rajpal and Sahjajit Sharma. A fruitful result of their arduous labour was seen in the plays “Aashna” and “Bakri” staged at Tagore Theatre off June 24 evening. In both productions, the highlight was the utter confidence of the young actors who were completely engrossed in their roles and hence gave convincing performances.

Once again the city realised that it was fast becoming a centre for performing and non-performing forms of art.
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