CHENNAI: Why was Draupadi not accepted by her father? Why did she lead a life of solitude despite having five husbands? What was love to her? Was it something she saw in Karna?” asks Neha Banerjee, a 35-year-old Kathak dancer. Had her questions stopped here, her upcoming production Sairandhri — The Musical would have been a conventional retelling of Draupadi’s life. But she goes on to ask: “Where is the Krishna figure for the modern Indian woman today?”
A collaboration of Indian and non-Indian dance forms, the dance-drama will depict the plight of Draupadi and a modern Indian woman as two parallel narratives, premised on the myriad emotions that a woman goes through in her life of sacrifices. While some dancers as Draupadi and the Pandavas will perform Kathak and Bharatanatyam, other dancers will play the modern Indian women in different roles and perform ballroom, zumba, tango, cha-cha and other contemporary dance forms.
“Being a Kathak dancer, I’ve observed that classical dance forms are not reachable to all audiences. Not everybody can understand taal, and beats; and those who do, get too engrossed in the rules to fully connect with the abhinaya,” explains Neha. So, six months back, she collaborated with Sandip Soparrkar, who runs a ballroom dance studio in Mumbai, to brainstorm the concept of the dance drama.
For Sandip, it was important to bring different forms together because not all dance forms are emotive in the same way. “I can’t have two ballroom dancers show a woman’s fears in a public space, or have cha-cha dancers depict aggressiveness,” he says, adding that one of the scenes depicting the ‘choicelessness’ of a woman will feature seven different Western dance forms. “A woman forced to marry and rear a child, will perform tango; a lesbian woman whose desires are suppressed will perform cha-cha, and so on.”
In an attempt to tie the different forms together, and make the piece a commentary on society, Sandip will play the role of a suthradhar or narrator, who will speak as the ‘male ego’. “In these six months we realised that a woman’s life today is far worse than that of Draupadi’s. At least she had Krishna, as a friend and guide. Who do women have today, except themselves?” Sandip asks.
This led them to juxtapose five episodes from Draupadi’s life with that of a modern woman’s — where she is killed at birth, molested, and harassed at workplace, alongside episodes like Draupadi’s swayamavar, disrobing, and mahaprasthan. “But it’s not a fusion or jugalbandhi. It is just a coming together of different forms without disrupting the aesthetics of any,” says Uma Rele, principal of Nalanda Nritya Kala Academy, who has helped with the direction of the show.
Bharatanatyam students from her academy will play the role of the Pandavas. “The creative process of each of these forms is different, so ideating it has been difficult, but if it must be done to reach more audiences, then why not?” she asks. But will the piece merely show its different characters in binaries — as evil men and victimised women? Will it be more critical of the differences of a modern woman’s life from that of Draupadi’s? We must watch them perform at The Music Academy on Feb 21 to find out.