| Fusion
Centered "East
as Center"
Chitresh Das Dance Company
ODC Theatre, San Francisco
May 29, 2003
reviewed
by Paul Parish
There have been a lot of fusion experiments in the Bay
Area over the last ten years—Flamenco and Butoh artists
collaborating, say, or Chinese folk-dance and African-American
dance companies performing together. The results have
been mostly mixed—curiosities, perhaps. A collaboration
between Purnima Jha, the Kathak soloist, and Rosa Montoya,
the flamenco diva, was a great deal of fun and illuminating
in many ways (it caused one to look very carefully at
exactly how the shod foot and the bare foot with its
henna’ed tendons accomplished their stampings). Some
have been only succeses d'estime, and at worst, only
the politically correct could love the results.
But at the end of May, Pandit Chitresh Das, the Kathak
master who settled in Marin County three decades ago
and began teaching Westerners his art, brought together
masters and disciples from three decidedly different
disciplines to create a performance of remarkable harmony
of purpose and effect. Jointly, Das and his best students,
together with Guru Govindan Kutty (a Kathakali master
from Calcutta) and his distinguished young student Surajit
Sarkar, and the Balinese choreographer Ni Ketut Arini
and her adult star pupil Kompiang Metri Davies, performed
“The Abduction of Sita,” a highly dramatic episode of
the great Sanskrit epic, the Ramayana.
What
made this hold together as a project is three-fold:
1) the remarkable respect and deference each guru gave
the other artists, 2) the extremely high quality of
the performers, and 3) the fact that the Ramayana is
a sacred text for all Hindu culture, as important for
the various cultures of India and Indochina as the story
of the parting of the Red Sea is for Christians and
Jews everywhere. Indeed, the Kathak (from north India),
the Kathakali (south India), and the Balinese court
culture (Indonesia) each cherish a danced version of
the epic, which is performed in extenso, in great and
entertaining detail, often lasting several days, in
their festival season.
So
the demon Ravana can be portrayed in the Kathak style,
with much stamping of feet, attacking and carrying off
by force the beautiful Sita, who fights back in the
Balinese style, flailing him unavailingly with her sash,
and each portrayal is convincing, and marvelously subtle,
and the web of the myth is like tensile steel, tight
and powerful and enthralling.
All
three traditions value storytelling; indeed the word
Kathak means story-telling. So does Kathakali (story-telling
dance). Concert performances we've gotten used to over
the years almost always take the form of a lecture demonstration,
with a preliminary section that lays out the elements—the
story that's going to be told and a selection of the
dancer's exercises (footwork, pirouettes, etc.)—followed
by a second section that shows how they can be used
to tell that story in an atmosphere of heightened importance.
"East as Center" held true to that format.
The
Kathak dancer works like a one-man band—different parts
of the body perform completely different tasks, and
the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The
dancer is dressed in a knee-length silk tunic over long
trousers, as one might see an Indian person dressed
on the street, except that the make-up is elaborate,
there are leggings made of tiny bells, and the feet
are bare. The footwork is meant to produce sound effects
that heighten the story. It looks like flamenco, but
it sounds different—the flat of the foot can slap the
floor, while the bare heel can make a deep hollow thunder.
By standing still and producing a tremor in one raised
foot, the dancer can produce a rustling like 15 rattlesnakes
in concert some distance away, or the quietest rain
sifting through the leaves.
There
are also highly refined techniques for the hands and
for the face, especially the eyes. The face-work is
impossible to misunderstand, the "natural"
language of fear, shyness, laughter, as any Western
mime would do it from Red Skelton to Baryshnikov (given
the difference in manners). The hands, meanwhile, perform
a beautified sign language that refers to things that
can't be shown and (for a solo performer) carries the
burden of the narrative. I have seen Das by himself
make you see a whole village—the water rising, the children
afraid of drowning, their anxious mothers, and the wrathful
god Indra, who means to destroy this whole town which
neglects him in favor of the boy-god, Krishna.
In
the dramatic style, there is more use of large "natural"
gesture, but the Kathak stance is still highly confined,
mostly in first position, with a tendu at the end of
a phrase for emphasis ("ta-dah!")—which contrasts
considerably with the open, large positions of the Kathakali
style, and also with the knock-kneed, bent-kneed posture
of the Balinese Legong style for women, who resemble
pigeons in a park, perched briefly, moving suddenly,
heads wagging, arms and shoulders raised, fingers trembling
like feathers, and eyes darting percussively (as if
they were striking tiny chimes) above serene, cat-like
smiles.
This
night there were nearly a dozen musicians (many from
India), and, to carry the story, at least eight primary
agents dancing. Ram (Kathakali) and his brother Lakshma
(Kathak), and Ram's bride Sita (Balinese), are assailed
by the ogress Surpanakha, who has fallen desperately
in love with Ram and tries to seduce him. But he turns
her away, disingenuously suggesting that his brother
Lakshman might be interested in her. Au contraire, Lakshman
is horrified, and in his revulsion attacks her, cutting
off her ear and out her tongue—whereupon she goes howling
through the heavens to her brother, Ravana, the lord
of the race of Apseras. She comes upon him dancing his
devotions to Shiva, but her bloody state and horrible
cries call him from his prayers, and enrage him. Hot
for Ram's blood, Ravana goes to his uncle, whom he finds
dancing in meditation and tries to incite to his cause.
But Uncle Mariacha has encountered Ram already and knows
that it will be the end of the power of the Apseras
if they do battle with Ram, and he tries, unsuccessfully
to calm Ravana. But nothing will do—and here's the plan:
Uncle Maricha must disguise himself as a golden deer
and entice Ram away from the house to hunt him, whereupon
Ravana will disguise himself as a Brahman come to the
house to beg alms, and trick Sita into coming out of
doors, whereupon he will grab her. The plot has many
twists, all of which provide wonderful excuses for a
new style of dancing. The deer is particularly beautiful,
Ravana's flight through the heavens in his mighty chariot
is truly thrilling, and the fight in which the mighty
eagle tires to rescue Sita but is defeated and has both
wings cut off by Ravana's sword is very high drama,
matched only by the heartbreaking scene in which Ram
finds the eagle, hears the story, and grants the dying
eagle salvation.
ODC
Theater was set up with an orchestra dais stage right,
and black panels hung at intervals deep at the back
of the house—which when lit by the wizardly smoke and
mirrors effects of Matthew Antaky very powerfully suggested
the dappled forest floor, dawn in the forest, the palace
of Ravana, the hermitage of his brother, the country
home of Ram, even the upper atmosphere where Ravana
in his chariot encounters the eagle in full flight.
Balinese
women's technique has many features that look modeled
on the behavior of birds—and the honored artist, Ni
Ketut Arini, who danced the eagle, gave perhaps the
most moving performance of the entire evening. The fight
was both heroic and doomed, and her death in Ram's arms
was an awesome consummation, one beautifully modulated
diminuendo, down to the quietest hush.
At
that point—as throughout—the cooperation of the musicians,
the dancers, and the work of the lighting designers
and technicians was extraordinary.
copyright
Paul Parish 2003
Photo: An unidentified drummer
(right) accompanies the dancing of Guru Govindan Kutty
(center) as Mariacha, who tries to dissuade Chitresh
Das (right) as Ravanna from making war on Ram.
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