CHENNAI: Almost 40 years ago, when Netherlands-born Saskia Kersenboom, a bharathanatyam artiste and scholar from Hungary, came to India, the scene of performing arts here was something that she yearned for. What followed was a path of discovery and reinterpretation of one of the most crucial aspect of performance arts—the Devadasis (the old Hindu tradition of girls getting married to temples and gods).
“I came to India in the mid-70s after a professor at the Utrecht University in the Netherlands suggested that I write to danseuse Nandini Ramani, after she saw my interest in performing arts. When I arrived here, the performing arts scene was everything that I wanted to see. Once I got into it, it demanded a lot of skills — language, music, image, lyric, music rhythm, raga and mudras. If you followed the path, everything was right in the face. I just followed it. I visited the Tyagarajaswami Temple, Tiruvarur, and there I witnessed the ajapa natanam festival. I began trying to picture how it could have been for the Devadasis to perform in that milieu, which is very different from the stage. I had my mind firmly set on the topic of the Devadasis,” she says.
While she pursued her BA and MA and eventually her PhD, the topic took shape with first a research paper and then a book titled Nityasumangali that was first published in 1987. “Prior to the book, the Devadasi had been analysed in travelogues and other works. But with respect to the field work, this was the first. I went with sources like agamas (rules governing temple worship) and Ranganayaki (a Devadasi from Tiruttani), who took me to the place where she sang and danced. Nityasumangali is more of a cultural map and I made it a logic of practice in the backdrop of history,” she adds.
Learning the dance form as a foreigner had its challenges, she admits. “It was more like how can a foreigner do it. But when the Chinese, Japanese and Indians can learn ballet, why can’t I perform bharathanatyam,” she says. After actively learning under Nandini between 1975 and 1995, Saskiya got a chance to tour Netherlands in a show and then during the December season in Chennai.
As she keeps revisiting India (she has meticulously kept a record of the visits — 18 times), Saskia, who started her centre Paramparai Foundation in the 90s has now shifted base to Hungary.
Saskia offers an integrated course of South Indian dance, poetry and vocal/instrumental music, called Dasi Aattam ‘Dance of the Devadasis’, certified by the International Dance Council – UNESCO, Paris. “I have been living there since 2006 and today, I have students from America, Switzerland, India, Hungary, the Netherlands, etc. I wanted to teach it as a craft and give a functional understanding of the art. There are classes for four hours a day. There are lessons in singing, adavus and jatis, and then in the afternoon they are taught Tamil and abhinayas.
Saskia, who served on the panel of The Park’s New Festival 2014 — Prakriti Foundation’s Contemporary Arts Festival — has been trained in veena and vocals, and knows Tamil, Sanskrit and Telugu.
“Unlike Western dance that is binary, here it is a triangle and that’s the most powerful thing about it. I think there is a Southern dance; it is Carnatic dance. It allows a lot of variations and is flexible and gives a heterogeneity,” she says.