Why PURUSH?

Created and curated by Dr. Anita Ratnam (Artistic Director of Arangham Trust) and co-curated by Hari Krishnan (Professor of Dance, Wesleyan University, USA), PURUSH is a five-day festival, dedicated to explorations of the male dancer in India and the diaspora from classical traditions to contemporary manifestations, from hyper masculine aesthetics to female impersonation, from historical colonial modernity to twenty-first century global realities. 

Featuring powerful performances by established and emerging male dancers, PURUSH also includes discussions and panel presentations with leading scholars from the fields of dance history, cultural studies, and gender studies, interrogating the past, present and future of the Indian male dancer.

A note on the festival by curator Anita Ratnam

Why PURUSH? I feel this is not even a question that needs asking but a subject that needs exploring and discussing. We presume that the world of dance means that women dance and men choreograph or teach. In India, men were the gurus and women were the dancers. Even today it is men who command more power and financial resources in the dance world with larger grants and more elaborate productions than women who are a majority as performers. 

In 1995, I curated and directed an evening of classical dance called PURUSH - Dancer, Actor, Hero. The world was a very different place then. I had recently returned from the USA filled with ideas about marketing, media relations and professional approaches to dance after my 12 year experience in broadcast television in New York City. The two day event, held at the Alliance Francaise auditorium and at the Music Academy hall were sold out with cars parked as far away as Narada Gana Sabha and all along College Road and people sitting in the aisles. It was a triumph of content and a co-ordinated plan of media, visual communication and direction. It was exhausting.

The evening of classical dance toured the US to great success in the Fall of 1995 and the topic was kept alive with the clutch of male dancers and gurus who were so grateful for the "exposure" they were given in an ocean of female bodies on stage.

18 years later, the dance scene is even more heterogeneous. There are so many Indian (South Asian) men in dance and other aspects of performance and scholarship. Issues of sexuality are no longer taboo although the classical dance world is still reluctant to discuss these sensitive issues. Themes are bolder and the young performers and a new generation of teachers is having to relearn new methods of teaching and transmitting the tradition to an international clutch of students. Teaching via Skype is becoming common and students from Azerbaijan, Iceland and Buenos Aires continue to flock towards our shores to learn from male gurus. 

Also with the proliferation and growing confidence of the NRI teacher who left India 30 years ago and who are now respected elders in their own cultural constituencies, a brash new generation of jean clad nayikas (Uttara Coorlawala's term) are occupying centre stage in arenas around the world, performing in denim, shorts, tank tops, sneakers, t-shirts and oodles of aplomb.

The 2013 conference is a culmination of a three year effort and perhaps, an 18 year old investigation about what it means TO DANCE. As a woman who has invested most of her life in the re-imaging of female icons on stage, I have always found that the proverbial VISHNU, KRISHNA, MURUGA and SIVA characters were not necessarily MALE but more 'qualities' that were embodied for public understanding within masculine images. Having said that, I have realised that today's male dancer in India is the busiest artiste in the dance world. They are constantly racking up air miles, flying from one city to another playing these male Gods or Demons for enthusiastic small town teachers.

Curating this conference along with my friend and collaborator of 18 years, Professor Hari Krishnan, has been a true adventure. Our dream plan has to be constantly tweaked, adjusted, altered, shelved, re-imagined and pushed every which way until we arrived at a template. This conference is the most ambitious ever. It is spread over 5 days, three venues and almost 100 artistes in attendance. On view will be radical physical theatre, traditional folk theatre, classical and contemporary dance from around India and the world. Keeping in mind the logistics and challenges of the auditoriums in Chennai during the annual December season, artistes, speakers and scholars have been invited, who could each contribute to the palimpsest called PURUSH- the global dancing male.