Book Review Chandralekha Woman Dance Resistance

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SAA 406 Indian Dance: Theory and Practice By Kiattipoom NantanukulWinter 2013

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Book Review

Chandralekha: Woman Dance Resistance. By Bharucha, Rustom. New Delhi: Indus,

1995. Pp.xiv+358.

Reviewed by Kiattipoom Nantanukul , 1 st

year MA in Arts and Aesthetics, School of Arts and

Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India,

[email protected]

It took Rustom Bharucha, one of Indian world-renowned performance studies scholars, at

least three years from 1989 to 1991 to meticulously research, frame, and structure

Chandralekha’s life and works before published in 1995. With support from many

Chandralekha’s resourceful friends, colleagues, and Chandralekha herself, Bharucha had got

plenty of fruitful information to bring one woman’s life into a book. His field works also

provide him more reports on the life and works of Chandralekha. The author very appreciates

what he has received during the process of writing this book as he ends his

acknowledgements that “this book is a tribute to what I have received” (1995: ix)

In the introductory section, it is very important for the reader to keep Bharucha’s objective

and his position in writing this book in mind while reading. It is impossible for Bharucha to

write only the biography of an Indian dancer. His main objective toward this book is to study

the life and major works of Chandralekha with his artistically and aesthetically methodology

and reflect these reports with his veteran critical writing skill. In order to write this book, he

obviously positions himself as a “critical insider,” which means he is not totally an outsider

critic as he usually is, at the same time, he is not the insider who might drown into the pitfalls

of being aficionado. One more point the reader should pay attention to is the importance of

these three major words in the book’s title, “woman, dance, and resistance.” The author takes




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the reader through Chandralekha’s life and works in the frame of these three keywords. The

reader becomes more and more understand the structure of his writing after going through

first one or two chapters from twelve chapters in the book.

In the first chapter, the author starts by introducing the childhood of Chandralekha. How her

childhood affects her life and thought as a woman. The relationship between Chandralekha

and these three important people, Harindranath or Baba, her Bharatanatyam Guru Ellappa,

and Dashrath, is explored by the author. Bharucha uses chandralekha’s biography to present

the roots of her thinking methods and structures. He relates each person to the changes or the

improvements in Chandralekha’s life until she started her early career.

Chapter two starts with the title “early career.” Bharucha intentionally looks into the details

of Chandralekha’s early Bharatanatyam work, Devadasi and its concluding part Tillana.

However, he establishes the problematic issues regarding to the understanding of the origin of

Bharatanatyam before point to Chandralekha’s work. The author spends quite a lot in this

establishing part, until, he himself admit that he has to limit himself before going too far. He

also mentions the Balasaraswati’s Parampara and Chadralekha’s perception toward it. When

reaching the performance part, Bharucha shows his skill in writing “from stage to page”

wonderfully. His descriptive writing toward all performances in this book sets very high

standard example of writing as if the reader is watching the performance on stage. He goes

through the details of Devadasi and Tillana which he points out the concept of Mandala in

Chandralekha’s choreography. The diagrams are also available in order to make it more

visually understandable.




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After facing quite failure from her first production, Chandralekha’s life had changed in the

period of 1960s to the early of 1980s. This period is the major point in the third chapter.

Between 1961 to 1984, the production of Navagraha in 1972 was the only production by

Chandralekha. The author talks about Chadralekha’s life in 1960s, the age of “Woodstock.”

How Chandralekha’s experience in this time shapes her life. Furthermore, Kamala the writing

work of Chandralekha is explored here. Bharucha comes with the excerpts and analysis of her

writing. However, the key concept of woman, dance, and resistance is still there. After that,

the work Navagraha is analyzed. It is the time when the work of Chandralekha combines not

only the concept of Mandala but also the notion of Tantric and Yoga. At the end of this

chapter, Chandralekha’s works in posters and cinema are shortly referred as the totally

different categories of her works that affected her later thoughts.

The fourth Chapter mainly discusses the activities of skills after Chadralekha had her place to

practice and develop the dancing skills. At the beginning of the chapter, the author considers

and raises opinion on the politics of friendship, especially the political thought between

Chandralekha and Sadanand. Later Bharucha mentions the details of how Chadralekha had

her space and conducted the workshop in the early of 1980s. Furthermore, her life with

political situation is also revealed in this chapter.

The main issue to be discussed in chapter five, the encounter of east-west notion of dance, is

grounded for the chapter of Angika performance in the sixth chapter. In this chapter,

Chandralekha’s voice as an Indian dancer among the international forum is discussed. The

reader can see why Chandralekha is referred by Bharucha as “perhaps the only Indian

participant who was in the position to deal ideologically with the problematics of classical

dance in a contemporary context.” This chapter also provides the details about




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Chandralekha’s notion of dance in the east-west encounter period. There are citations from

other scholars’ statements also. What Chandralekha’s sources of inspiration mainly focused

at that time was the idea of male and female, yoni and lingam as presented in Primal Energy.

This made Chadralekha return to the dance stage again with inter-relatioships among

Bharatanatyam, Yoga, and martial arts. These elements lead to the major focus in the next

two chapters.

Chandralekha’s manifesto of the body in dance, production of Angika, is discussed in Chapter

six. The author begins with the concept of Cosmic energy in Chandralekha’s choreography.

Then he describes the performance of Angika part by part. While describing the performance,

Bharucha adds his critiques into each part as well. He also collects the responses from other

critics toward Angika and uses them critically in order to analyze the performance in the

larger framework. He conceptualizes each part of the work of Chandralekha. Finally he

writes his opinion and his own dream on Angika.

Chapter seven considers the responses after the performance of Angika. The author evaluates

the critical reception to Chandralekha’s work within the larger politics of the media. He goes

through the critiques from many media. Seemingly, the most negative responses receive more

attention for the author. In December 1986, Angamandala was performed. The author, again,

describes the performance in each part and discusses the critical receptions toward this

performance. Lastly mentioned in the chapter is the specially choreographed piece for

inauguration ceremony called Namaskar.

After Angika, Chandralekha had to encounter with many traditionalists. Nevertheless,

Lilavati was the next of her masterpiece. This performance is the main object to be discussed




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and analyzed in chapter eight of the book. The author starts by talking about the background

of this performance. The text of Lilavati comes from the Bhaskaracharya’s mathematical

treatise written in the tenth century. In the text, he intricate the mathematical questions of

algebra, geometry, arithmetic, and calculus to his daughter named Lilavati. Then Bharucha

mentions the principles of Chandralekha’s selection. This piece of her deals more erotically

with a man-woman relationship in order to examine the eros in the world of numbers.

Chandralekha transformed the mathematical question sloka into the movement on stage. This

performance allowed her to search for the feminism in the female character. After the

questions go on, by reading the meticulous description from Bharucha, the report on the

touring of Lilavati is recorded. It seems that Lilavati is an iconic performance by

Chandralekha because of the fact that it is the only production by her to be shown on

television on a program that set new standards for the design of dance in mass media.

Chapter nine is quite shorter than other chapters in the book. It contains the reports of many

performances after Lilavati. The first one to be mentioned is Prana. This performance

reflects the desire of Chandralekha to search and pay homage to breath. It is the correlation

between Yoga and Bharatanatyam, as considered deeper in detail as asanas and adavus. Then

there was the link to Navagraha and the concept of Cosmic. Bharucha describes the

performance of Prana from the opening to the detail of all planetary Yantras. The

performance ended with Namaskar to Shanti. The brief response to this performance is also

available at the end of the chapter.

Chapter ten begins with this statement. “I am not talking about dance all the time. I am

talking about your bodies, your lives, and your consciousness.” Bharucha moves from

considering performances to talk about the relationships between Chandralekha and her




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dancers. What is the heart of her dancer training is discussed in this chapter. The whole

notions of dancer are considered. How can Chandralekha find the dancer? What is the

method of dancer training? What are the specific principles of dance for Chandralekha? What

is the result or outcome of her training? And what are the reactions from the dancers who had

worked with Chandralekha? The reader can find the answers to these questions in this chapter

with the wide horizontal research of the author. One interesting point in this chapter is about

male dancer. Bharucha explores the life of Sridhar, the male dancer in Chandralekha’s troupe.

His story reveals the feminine in the male presence and the understanding of male energy. In

this chapter, the reader is also introduced to foreign connections of Chandralekha. The

outstanding one is Susanne Linke from Germany. The author critiques how this international

connection has influenced on the workshop of Chandralekha. This made Chandralekha go to

wider, intercultural context.

A full-page poster with the sentence “India worships its women” with the shadow of a

woman lying above the statement is the introduction to chapter eleven. On the next page, the

author begins the first topic “In Search of Freedom.” This phrase is a continuous quest for

Chandralekha as she had encountered various social norms and modes of regimentation. For

her, freedom can never be taken for granted. Bharucha looks into deeper paradigm by

contextualizing Chandralekha’s relationship to feminism in Indian context. He introduces the

idea of feminist movement in India and how Chandralekha responds to the movement

through herself and her works. He tells the story of his collaborative work with

Chandralekha, the starting point of their friendship, called Request Concert,” one part of a

larger intercultural theatre project. After that, many works by Chandralekha that deal with her

feminism are explored. The first is the poem called One More News. The second is Fire,

Counter fire. The third is the making of poster for the women’s movement where she used




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the image to reclaim the icon from its appropriation by the government and reinvest with new

energy and belief in the primacy of women’s creativity. The fourth work is Chandralekha’s

exhibition of Stree, the controversial issue among Hindu women. This work also linked to the

film Sahaja which contained the same topic of Stree. This film is discussed at the end of the

chapter.

From Chandralekha’s feminist view, Bharucha ends his book with Chandralekha’s dance

piece called Sri. This work reflects not only the synonymous with the goddesses Lakshmi and

Devi but also the wider spectrum of earth energies and fertility symbols. These, undeniably,

came from Chandralekha’s voice in feminist movement although her self-representation may

seem problematic to many feminists. The author takes the reader through the performance of

Sri part by part with his conceptualization and ends the last chapter with his dream for

Chandralekha’s troupe.

The author claims in the postscript that this book cannot be completed without this session

where he mentions the latest work of Chandralekha (in 1994), called Yantra. He gives brief

background and opinion on this work.

If considering the objective in writing this book with the result after going through all pages,

the reader can realize that Bharucha accomplishes his goal. He does not write Chandralekha’s

biography, but he, again, meticulously, combines her biography with his presentation.

Chandralekha becomes great example of the artist for Bharucha to explore and conceptualize

the definition of woman, dance, and resistance. In every chapter, the author links the topic

back to his thesis. This sets a very good example in writing a valuable report in performance

studies.




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Rustom Bharucha shows his talented skills in not only reading the performance but also

communicating the performance to the reader. His performance descriptions are great. He can

transform the text from “stage to page” incredibly. Inevitable, this work of Bharucha is the

must for those who interest or do a research on Chandralekha.

However, as the time has passed, the changes in performance studies happen every moment.

This makes the terminology in this book is not up-to-date. Certainly, Bharucha might want to

change some words and fulfill his report with latest information if he looks back to this work

at this time. Unfortunately, there is no more Chandralekha.

On one hand, this book is undeniable for being a great treatise on life and works of

Chandralekha, on the other hand, the awareness of falling into the pitfalls of being

Bharucha’s aficionado is needed. His attitude toward Chandralekha, according to his book, is

very positive. However, studying on any issues, the researcher needs to be a good “critical

insider” as Bharucha positions himself in writing this book. Other views on Chandralekha’s

life and works need to be considered as well.

Documents

Book Review Chandralekha Woman Dance Resistance