Portraits

Madhavi Mudgal in Boston

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A few selections from Smt. Madhavi Mudgal's Odissi workshop in Boston in late September when she was demonstrating  "Yahi Madhava", an exerpt from Geetha Govinda, composed by the 12th century poet Jayadeva - a scandalous string of accusations by Radha when Krishna gets back after wild night of partying. A comparable twenty first century exchange might probably go something this like  "Get out of my apartment you jerk", but Jayadeva spins it differently

A sleepless night of passion, your bloodshot eyes express the mood of awakened love. Go away Madhava , oh! Go away Krishna, don’t you lie to me. Go to her Krishna, she will ease your despair; she will cool your burning passion- why come to me? Your bright lips darkened by kissing her kohl-blacked eyes-Oh! Krishna, at dawn they match the colour of your body. The scratches on your body tell of the battle of love, they tell of the triumph of passion like gold writing on sapphire. Oh Krishna, your heart must be blacker than your skin, how can you deceive me, so faithful in our love? Look at the bed of love-the flowers are no more fresh, the sandalwood paste has dried, the oil in the lamp has dried. Oh Krishna oh Madhav, go away, leave me-don’t lie to me.  ( translation: www.srjan.com, Guru Keluchanran Mohapatra Odissi Nrityabasa)

Its the same piece that inspired me to start the documentary project on Dance Gurus when I photographed Sri. C.V. Chandrasekhar in early 2011.  Juxtaposing two veteran artists expressing the same poetry in two different stylistic languages is perhaps something I should explore in a future post.

With thanks to Vanita Shastri from Meru Educational Foundation for organizing the event and for arranging the permissions. 

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Domestic Dances

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No makeup. No blackouts. No spotlights.  No seamless backdrops.

 

Stack of books on top of dining table by the side of left over orange juice. Titled posters. Random dining table chairs. Annoying glare of compact fluorescent tubes. Daylight from the wrong direction...barely illuminating the dancer in the foreground...Can the dancers rise above these indispensible clutter of our day today interior residential environments for the benefit of the camera? Can the photographer overcome the limitations of tight interior spaces in capturing the energy, grace and the emotive bearings of the dancer?

 

Here is a small collection of  initimate, in-house performance portraits from the last two years most of them shot within the tight residential spaces in urban neighborhoods - Professor C.V.Chandrasekhar's apartment in Besant Nagar, Chennai ; His disciple Malini Srinivasan's apartment in Queens, New York ; Founder and artistic director of Navarasa Dance Theater - Dr.Aparna Sindhoor’s live-work home/dancer co-op in Sommerville, MA. Perhaps the only exception in terms of scale are the house performance shots of Smitha Radhakrishnan at the single family home of Vallari Shah in Whitefields outside of Bangalore.

 

Perhaps those center tables, window mullions, light switches and doorknobs in the background don't diminish the visual impact of these dancers. On the contrary, these photos remind us dance is often produced, practiced and refined within the comfort zones of ones personal space, even as it is marketed and consumed in public.

 

Why are classical Indian dancers almost always pictured formal context - literally elevated on a stage, as they claim the mantle of exclusive ambassadors of a narrow definition of culture. Perhaps we need more photographs like these to divorce the institutionalized relationship between the classical Indian dance as and elite nationalistic representations of culture. Perhaps we need these images to remind us that even classical dance forms at its very core are about the celebration of human body and the joy of personal expression.

 

As for the photographs for the Bharatanatyam, Odissi and Kathak performances during Independence Day celebrations, there should no cause for concern. There will always be plenty of overdone makeup, misdirected spotlights and dissonant backdrops.