Bharatanatyam is no more a regional pride, it has become global, as popular as Yoga in the classical dance genre. What got democratised after the disenfranchisement of the matriarchal hereditary community is today a decentralised industry. While decentralisation is an imperative stamp for the oral tradition, giving the form a converging and diverging quality, what threatens Bharatanatyam is the non-traditional approach adopted by the dance educators, whose focus is merely on teaching ‘items’. As a result, the essence of Bharatnatyam as a knowledge tradition has taken a hard hit.
Are the students of classical dance taught holistically to be intellectually observant and emotionally stable individuals? Is making loud noises using social media a healthy practice for the learners of the art form? I reached out to Alarmel Valli, a celebrated Bharatanatyam dancer to know more on how in the pre-digital era dance training was done.
Known for her adherence to the demands of the form, Alarmel Valli’s dance is not just rich but such a delight to watch. Watching her dance is to witness poetry visually coming alive, where one gets to see the music and hear the dance. True to the Pandanallur bani, her Bharatanatyam will be musical. The entire pure dance segment would mirror the movements of water, either flowing as a river negotiating a turn or gently rising and falling as a wave. Her footwork would exuberate elements of vallinam (light) and mellinam (shade) as the body would float, traversing through space. At all times, she will hold her poise at a threshold. This poise is from where the movements would gracefully emerge and return. In the dramatic segment, her involvement while conveying through gestures be it a lotus or a leaf will transform her entire being as that object. It will be impossible for a spectator not to immerse themselves in watching her.
The probability of catching a Bharatanatyam recital like hers is becoming more and more a rarity today, especially since the emphasis is on drawing bold lines or in staging agility. Movements today are so sharply cutting through space that they all resemble the fall of trees during deforestation.
When asked about how movements were taught to her by the hereditary practitioners, she says, “A remarkable aspect of the teaching by my gurus — Pandanallur Chokkalingam Pillai and his son Pandanallur Subbaraya Pillai — was that they never stood up to demonstrate the dance adavus. Significant principles of aesthetics and movement vocabulary were conveyed using metaphors and analogies from life and nature. These images powerfully evoked in my mind the important lessons they were meant to convey. For instance, while evolving the Pandanallur style to create a seamless quality in the movements, Chokkalingam Pillai sir, after many frustrating attempts, finally used an imagery asking me to unfurl the hands as if a rolled-up feather at the tip would unfurl into a straight line when the toy whistle is blown. Such imagery became the foundation for my understanding of the vital principle of ‘fluid lines’ in nritta and still resonates in my subconscious.” She shares that focussed observation, quiet introspection, deep internalisation and assimilation were the process that made her a complete dancer.
Evidently, hereditary practitioners had a good grasp of how to use mundane real-life objects and situations for teaching dance as a holistic knowledge system. They used movements, rhythm, melody, and harmony as tools to help a practitioner to discover the true potential of ‘self’. They neither had any agendas while putting anyone on a proscenium, nor were they focussed in cloning the student in want to leave behind a legacy. Above all, teaching dance was not about standardising a movement; but, it was a process of allowing the student to blossom.
This attitude of the teachers was also reflected in the parents. Valli recollects an incident from her childhood to share how her mother was a task master and her biggest critic. On one occasion, when Valli was practising a jathiswaram, she got distracted for a split second which caught the keen eyes of her mother. That day, after the class, her mother sat her down and gave her a sermon. In a very stern voice, she told, “Never take your dance casually. For before you know it, Goddess Saraswati will leave you. You are as a mustard seed before the art.” Her other advice on that day was to approach both practice and performance as ‘a sacred commitment’.
Indeed! In treating Bharatanatyam as a sacred commitment, the dancers today may look less like assembly line workers. If dance educators and parents approached the art form as a sacred commitment, then students may actually get to learn how to be observant, receptive and responsive with all their senses. More importantly, learning a dance form would not just be about going up on stage to perform; it could be explored to grasp the various shades of mind and various states of awareness.
Traditional pedagogies are meant to evoke sublime experiences for an audience.