The dancer’s body is the canvas on which the choreographer
paints her picture. The rigour, the discipline, the restraint and the passion,
described by one of the doyennes of dance
Anita Ratnam
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| The production Pushed |
Drenched in sweat, she completed her routine and
walked to the side of the rehearsal room to take a sip of water and wipe her
face with a towel that was already soaked with the previous two hours of
rigorous practice. Two more soiled towels lay tossed on the floor. The guests
applauded warmly, rose from the straw mats and walked silently towards the
other end of the dance studio where a simple meal was waiting. The dancer did
not follow. She was already into her next routine - stretching, jumping in
place and twisting her torso to stay warm and keep her muscles pliant for
another round of rehearsal. She was now into her third hour of intense dancing
and her slim body was as energetic as when she first began. Her energy was
unflagging. By the time she had finished, the dinner and dessert – a large bowl
of fruits and ice cream- had disappeared. The dancer once again wiped her face
and arms and gracefully approached the dining table. The single thought with
all the admiring guests was “What will she eat to sustain such an amazing body?
She plucked a small bunch of grapes, a piece of jackfruit and nibbled on them,
still lost in thought. I turned to her aunt who whispered, while still gazing
admiringly at her niece, “She lives on air, water, fruit, very little food and
her passion for dance”.
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| The production Pushed |
The above scene was from my recent visit to Sri
Lanka to watch preparations for the annual Chitrasena Dance Company’s
performance season, this time dedicated to the 82 year old matriarch Vajira,
principal dancer and wife of the late dance icon Chitrasena. The ensemble of
dancers were universally slim and fit.
Thaji and Mithilani, the two women who are also part of the brilliant
Nrityagram ensemble performance SAMHARA, were distinctly superior to their
colleagues. In private conversation with Thaji’s aunt Upeka, I learned of the rigorous
routine that all dancers at Nrityagram are submitted to. For three years these
two young women, accompanied by their choreographer Heshma, did early morning
runs through the countryside followed by sessions of yoga, pilates, pranayam, Odissi adavus,
stretching before and after rehearsals, simple food and 14 to 16 hour days
immersed in nothing but caring and working the body to its limits. And the
results showed on stage with high octane vigour, stamina and stellar
performance energy.
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| Nrityagram |
The late American dance diva Martha Graham said so
rightly, “ Dancers are atheletes of the soul”. The sentence is telling. Like
sportspeople, dancers have to train. But unlike their colleagues who grunt,
yell, slide, shout, shriek, grimace and pant, dancers have to practice the art
of camouflage while still exerting their bodies with the same pitch of
hyperactivity and containing all pain beneath a smile or a calm visage. To
dance is to share one’s entire being – body and soul – with the audience. A
most generous and vulnerable act that not everybody recognises. And to perform
at a supremely effortless level of sublime finesse takes hours, days, weeks and
years of taxing, exhausting work. On and off the stage.
To tune ones body to the demands of today’s
performance spaces and the cynical unforgiving eyes of distracted audiences, is
calling for a lifetime of total surrender. Look at the many systems of cross
training that has emerged in health studios around India and elsewhere.
Gyrotonics, Soul Cycle, Zumba, Kick Boxing, Spinning, Mixed Martial Arts, Tai
Chi, Qi Gong, Running, Cycling….. the list goes on. Yoga has now assumed many
avatars and so has becoming vegetarian, vegan ( no dairy foods) and fasting.
Dancers are taking all methods of cross training to keep their bodies and
muscles alert and alive in order to express anything and everything their minds
conceive. In Indian dance, the torso
remains static and the legs mostly in a demi-plie, araimandi, semi squat
position which demands that the lower body and the core become very strong to
support the back and the spine area. The arms and feet are those that are moved
and exerted while the extremities and the facial muscles are trained to “speak
the stories”. As a contrast, western dance forms, especially modern and contemporary
dance training demands a shift of the centre of gravity where the torso can
turn and the centre of gravity can be thrown any way it chooses. That, combined
with extensive floor movements and upside down tumbles demands a different
system of training. Indian dancers are getting introduced to these newer
systems of sustained hyper physicality in order to quieten the facial
communication and transfer the energies to the entire body.
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| Aditi Mangaldas |
This calls for extreme discipline and a 24/7 lifestyle of abstinence. Dancers
in the west take to smoking in order to cut their appetite and remain thin. A
slim Indian dancer was not the norm until about 15 years ago, when the large
scale of international theatres called for a hyperkinetic level of dance
excitement from the performer. To succeed in leaping, jumping, stretching,
turning while retaining compusure is not what the traditional gurus taught.
After all, classical dance schools did not have mirrors or sprung wooden
floors. Indian dancers trained on stone and concrete surfaces and in mostly
small rooms.
The late Ranjabati Sircar recognised this shift in
dance viewing and called for a new system and method of training dancers, both
in the classical and contemporary fields. Classical dancers were more likely to
rest on the weight of the great tradition and allow the music and poetry
combined with the cultural memory of eyes accustomed to seeing voluptuous
temple friezes transferred onto mature bodies on stage. The focus towards
fitness and the articulate body began when the contemporary dancer in India
recognised the dire need for new ways of training the body as a machine.
Western dance styles offered the tried and tested methods and so began the
ideas of “warm ups” and “cool downs”.
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| Kalpana Ranjana Raghuraman |
Today when we watch Bijoyini and Surupa of
Nrityagram , Padmini Chettur, Preethi Athreya, Mavin Khoo, Kalpana Raghuraman
and Aditi Mangaldas perform, we can recognise the hours of cross training those
classical dance bodies have undergone to make smooth transitions from one level
or pose to another. Rehearsing Odissi, Bharatanatyam and Kathak steps cannot
create THAT level of precision and perfection. The seeing eye is often
forgiving while the camera’s eye shows every imperfection. The new age dancer
of today recognises that every moment is a “Kodak moment”. That every muscle
and tissue should be in perfect simpatico at every moment to communicate
whatever the soundscape is saying.
To dance with the entire body does not always mean
to create fast, breathless nonstop movement. It also means that slowing down a
particular moment or a movement to near stillness calls for extreme control of
muscle and breath. That too is not taught in classical dance systems. These are
neo-classical interventions of the here and now. To extend one arms in longing
and to make the entire body stretch in anticipation calls for strength and
flexibility. To stretch on the ground as Vishnu in regal respose atop serpent
Adisesha needs balance, Krishna twirling on Kaliya’s hood needs focus, Nataraja
dancing in the heavens demands the extremes of every asset the body can call
upon.
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| Kalpana Ranjana Raghuraman |
In contrast, the ideas of nightmares, changing
moods, tornados, feminism, dislocating geographies and personal memoirs also
mandates another kind of fitness for non
narrative presentations. Watching the dancers of Pina Baush, Nederlands Dance
Theatre, Marie Chouinard of Montreal and Lee Hwa Min of Taiwan’s Cloud Gate
Theatre makes me realise the kind of observation, improvisation and out of
studio experiences that these dancers have. Observing birds and animals and
translating those into choreography, making calligraphy into body art, social
behaviour into performance – all these inputs from imaginative creators needs
an empty but pliant canvas to work on. The dancer’s body is that empty canvas.
Unless it is ready, primed and toned it cannot become the site for the
choreographer’s imaginative paintbrush.
The writer is a Chennai-based dancer, choreographer, curator and arts’ activist
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