Soul sisters
At the cusp of Women’s History Month and National Poetry Writing Month, Anita R Ratnam’s ‘Naachiyar Next’ pays homage to Andal, the 7th-century Tamil woman poet and saint from Kothai. “She is a revered poet in the south and the only woman saint to have her temple. She is relatively unknown in the north so my performance aims to bridge this gap,” says the 69-year-old dancer, who has also pioneered a dance form, ‘neo-Bharatam’, which is an amalgamation of different dance forms.
Born in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, Ratnam began dancing at the age of three, informally trained under Rai Narayan, a guru and family friend. “My mother loved dance but could not pursue it as her father did not allow it. She vowed to introduce dance to her daughter if she had one,” she says.
Ratnam had her Arangetram — the debut on-stage performance of a dancer — at nine. She later trained under Adyar Lakshman, a student of the famous Kalakshetra centre of Chennai.
In 1976, she pursued a master’s degree in theatre and television from the University of New Orleans, in the US. She then worked as a TV producer for WNJU, a Spanish-language channel, for 10 years. There, she produced a Saturday morning show featuring Indian news and cultural programmes, and realised the difficulty in contacting celebrated Indian artists. Upon her return to India in 1990, she curated a phonebook with addresses and contact details of over a thousand dancers, leading to the creation of Narthaki, a dance web portal, in 2000. “People want to connect with dancers for events but do not know where to look. That is why I started the phonebook and later launched the web portal,”she explains.
Birth of a new genre
“The idea of doing something different has always appealed to me, but the term ‘neo-Bharatam’ did not come to me until 1999 when I watched The Matrix and resonated with the character ‘Neo’, played by actor Keanu Reeves. Like Neo, trained in many forms of combat, I, too, am trained in various art forms,” she says.
Trained in classical Bharatanatyam, Kathakali, Mohiniattam, Tai Chi, Kalarippayattu, and yoga, Ratnam created Neo-Bharatam to synthesise these forms as a medium of storytelling into a cohesive whole.
She wanted to move away from traditional storytelling, especially portraying women as submissive in poems written by men. “I was tired of performing dance recitals on poems by men depicting a woman, weak in love, waiting, longing, and yearning for her loved one. I wanted my performances to have a stronger female narrative,” she says.
In her quest to create something new, Ratnam acknowledges that she has upset her gurus, including her mother. “My work was ignored for many years, but I had to persist in voicing women’s struggles against patriarchy through my art. Andal is an example of such defiance,” she says.
Who is Naachiyar?
Andal was known by many names, and Naachiyaar is one of them. In Nachiyar Tirumoli, a set of 140 verses, Andal expressed her love for Lord Vishnu. What sets her apart from other women saints is that she does not shy away from expressing her sexuality. Sexual attraction is to her a form of devotion.
“The legend says she disappeared into Sri Ranganatha, the Vishnu temple in Tiruchirapalli. If you follow any woman saint, most disappear. In the case of Meera Bai, some say she disappeared in a cave temple of Lord Krishna, while others have different stories. No one knows their fate — were they alive or taken away?”
asks Ratnam. ‘Naachiyar Next’ raises these questions, exploring the idea of a young woman choosing sainthood over the patriarchal norms of marriage. “Andal’s verses are translated into English, so it can reach a larger audience and compel them to think about her and many like her, who challenged patriarchy by becoming saints,” she says.
‘Naachiyar Next’ will be staged at Chinmaya Mission Hall, 89 Lodhi Estate, Lodhi Road, March 31, 6pm