CHENNAI: Celebrating the pioneer Mohan Khokar, who was instrumental in documenting dance in his 70-year-long career, the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), New Delhi, organised his centenary celebrations at Kalakshetra on Saturday. “It all started with the camera he possessed as a youngster in Punjab in the 1920s. Thereby, he documented everything around him.
This was the period when cameras were very rare, photo frames were imported and India was not independent,” shared Ashish Khokar, Mohan’s son, trustee and curator of Mohan Khokar Dance Collection and advisor, IGNCA of the dance professor. A short film that encapsulated the vision of Mohan with rare footage of him from the archives was screened.
“For him, dance was the most transient and momentary art form that could not be repeated. He believed that the beauty of the photos from his collections is that they speak a lot about the history and the journey of how Bharatanatyam came to Western and Northern India,” he said. Padma Shri awardee K Kalyanasundaram Pillai inaugurated the event attended by Sonal Mansingh, Rajya Sabha MP and trustee of IGNCA, and danseuse Padma Subrahmanyam.
The archives were donated to IGNCA by the inheritors Saroja MK and Ashish. Sachchidanand Joshi, the executive academic head of IGNCA, shared in the short film, “It was unbelievable to witness these many collections which explained the history of Bharatanatyam which was over 60 years old. It even had photos of Padma Subrahmanyam’s first dance performance as a child which brought happy tears for her.’’ Ashish reminisced, “Mohan Khokar was a man of many parts, a visionary, father figure, an author of seven books and many others.
But at heart, he remained a rasika, a celebrator of art where not one photo was sold nor not one ornament was disposed from the collections as he believed that they are the nation’s history and collective wealth which many generations of dancers, gurus, scholars, devadasis, academicians, media and filmmakers had gifted him.” Following the screening Kalyanasundaram, Sonal, and Padma released the Book of Tributes. The event concluded with Aditya Nataraja taking to the stage with his dance performance, Shiva Stuti.