As the Vedic hymn breaks out on the loudspeakers at the Kalashakti Mandapam at Vaikom, 25 km from Kochi, Bharatanatyam exponent Shakuntala slowly raises her arms upwards. Wearing a striking silver top with white pyjamas, she moves to one side of the stage and places a palm over her face. In the second segment, she dances to a poem by Sufi poet Rumi and concludes with another poem called Living The Promises of the Soul, with music by French mystic philosopher Jean-Claude Genel.
Shakuntala performed her original work, the Bharatnatyam triptych, on her first visit to Kerala, recently. What was unusual about this performance was that Shakuntala is a Frenchwoman. She has been performing this dance form in the US, Europe, Africa and India, for three decades now.
She fell in love with this dance form accidentally. One day, in the late 60s, when teenager Shakuntala was walking along the banks of the Seine river in Paris, she entered a bookshop where she came across a book called A Sacred Dance. “It had a lot of photographs of Bharatanatyam, which fascinated me,” she says.
At that time, she was studying ballet. It took her three years to start learning Bharatanatyam under Frenchwoman Malavika. After a four-year stint, she secured a scholarship from the Indian Council for Cultural Relations and the French government, and came to Chennai. There, she learnt Bharatanatyam under Kalaimamani V S Muthuswamy Pillai for many years.
Asked about the charms of Bharatanatyam, Shakuntala says, “You can express yourself through movements. There is a lot of scope for creativity. I don’t know of a similar dance form that is so expressive. On the other hand, ballet is very formal. There is not much emotion. In Bharatanatyam, one person can play all the characters, while in ballet you need several people.”
One of her dances is called Parvati. “It traces the life of the goddess from childhood till she becomes Kali,” says Shakuntala. “But one of my more popular items is the fight between Shiva and Meenakshi. I have performed it over 150 times worldwide,” she says.
Shakuntala has been one of the earliest dancers to use Vachika Abhinaya (using speech during a recital). “I wanted to make Bharatanatyam accessible to foreigners,” she says.
Asked whether she had experienced any difference in the audience reaction across continents, Shakuntala says, “There’s not much of a change. All human beings are affected by the same emotions.”