Over the past five days, we have tackled and discovered many questions, concerns and provocations, but our question from day one has served as a trigger for many of these conversations. Before an evening performance on December 21, we met Leela Venkataraman to elaborate on some of the points she made in her opening speech the previous day.
She remarks that the female body, with its breasts - prominent, articulate markers of a certain gender, makes it slightly harder for those possessed of them to bend gender and take on roles from the opposite sex, reiterating that this is a personal viewpoint.
It leads us to wonder why male bodies might be considered neutral. Many people point out that a bare torso allows one to locate dance movement in the body with greater clarity, which gives male bodies an edge over other bodies. Yet, it is facile to ignore the social and historical climate that makes it unacceptable for women to dance bare-bodied and achieve equal clarity. Another argument is that the flatness of the male torso offers a plainer space for the dance to be projected onto the body. Do you think that male bodies are neutral dancing bodies? Read on, and respond.
Excerpts from a conversation:
Who would you say are five dancers who have changed the game for dance in India, vis-a-vis the male dancer?
First, of course, Uday Shankar and Ramgopal. Until that time, where was the question of Indian dance being performed there (outside India)? An odd devadasi had gone there. Shanta Rao had performed a few times. Other than that, Indian dance had really not been considered in a big way. And the fact that there was a beautiful male body performing for the first time. And both these people had such an awesome presence - that made a tremendous difference to what was shown. And plus the exotic costumes.
I think there was a lot of the exotic east...and also having been people who had lived outside India, they had a broad...some ideas about professionalism and presentation that were very different from Indian conditions. So they combined these two, and that was a very great thing, for they knew things about aesthetics...they knew how to please these foreign audiences. And that carried a great deal of weight at that time - also that a male did that kind of thing.
There was a time, even in the West, when the male dancer was only used to carry a female dancer and nothing else. They also went through this period when the male had a very small role to play in ballet, till other people came and changed the whole situation. I think these two people (Uday Shankar and Ram Gopal) did do that in Indian dance in a very big way, as performers.
The next person I would name is Rukmini Devi (Arundale). She started bringing in males for her dance dramas and then she took them in to do the entire margam. There was a tremendous amount of resentment from the other gurus. They didn't want it at all. What I hear from Dhananjayan is - though some people don't corroborate it...he says that when they started dancing Bharatanatyam, gurus wouldn't teach them. They wouldn't take any trouble with them, but say - okay, you follow the rest of the class. And they were with a lot of girls, and they used to dance in a rather effeminate way.
Then, I believe, Rukmini Devi introduced Kathakali. She put all these men through the Kathakali training. So they acquired the presence and the bearing. 'Dance like a man', as one says today. You don't have to deny your gender in order to be able to do Indian dance; you can be yourself and still do it. She made a big difference. Despite that, in the beginning, everyone from (CV) Chandrasekhar to (Adyar) Lakshman - they all met with some very unhappy comments. Subbudu once wrote about Chandrasekhar, "Even though he is a male, he managed to impress."
They were not very happy with the comments! But, they got through that.
Then, there was Chandralekha. She was the one who made you feel that gender was a non-issue, that it wasn't important at all. Even in Sri, which was the struggle of women, she had men dancing. The idea was to show that there is the body which expresses something; you don't have to bother about gender roles - they do not characterise you at all. Ultimately, dance is dance.
These are four people who made a tremendous difference. A fifth name is a little difficult...Dhananjayan and all these people have been doing a lot of work for dance. But, you know, the minute you start saying...I think about this a lot, I haven't got any firm opinions yet...they say, we want to have a repertoire for the male dancer, design an item for the male dancer. You are widening the difference by bringing out the fact that you are separating the male body from the female body - aren't you doing that?
That feel, that sensitivity to gender is still there. But these are people who have all been great sources of inspiration for male dancers. Today, in Kalakshetra, you have so many good male dancers. Some of them are extraordinary...much better than many of the women?
Could you go into the context of that widening of differences between bodies that you spoke of? Is that a healthy way to go?
I don't think that is very good. In my opinion. But my opinion may not be relevant here. It is not a question of the item, about a female attitude towards something, or a male attitude towards something. It's about how you feel about something and what you are going to show. I don't think you should be so gender-conscious and bothered about your own gender.
I gave some examples yesterday. You see a male dancer who is six feet tall (Vishnu Tattva Das), who lives in the US. That is the kind of thing I would like. They don't think of the male or female. For instance, Nimmi, who played Kumbhakarna and Lakshmana. She says that it is not an issue for her at all. Someone asked if she felt that the male gender sits well on her. She said, "I don't think of it."
I would like that attitude to develop. That is a very healthy attitude.
Yesterday, you spoke about the male torso and how it lends itself better to male and female styles, as opposed to a less versatile female torso...perhaps you could expand on that?
For instance, you have a female doing a male role. A role, not the dance, but the role. In representative dance...when you are bringing out a particular role. It is more difficult, I feel. Somehow, the female body, with its breasts and everything, it so completely articulates a particular gender that it becomes very difficult for these people (with breasts) to do actual roles, to want to become a male role. Even in the Gubbi theatre, there was a woman who was very good at male roles...generally, you find that females in male roles are very uncommon. They are at a disadvantage in terms of the expansiveness the role requires.
Whereas, males in female roles...stree vesham was something that was already there in the country. Once, there was a festival we organised in Delhi, Apna Utsav. We had Kala Krishna dancing and he had danced the week before in Delhi. And the person who was supposed to pick him up from the station had seen him perform. So we said - that is the person you have to pick up. He went off, and after three hours, he came back and said - itni khoobsurat aurat koi bhi nahin thi wahan (there was no woman as beautiful as that one).
Twenty minutes later, Kala Krishna comes jolting in a rickshaw and says - nobody met me at the station!
So, the disguise is so complete - and this again is a very personal opinion - that when stree vesham roles are done by the women, they do not have that quality. When a man is doing a female role well, you don't bother about his body - you just concentrate on the characterisation. There is something about putting on a female role, where they transcend their gender and body and become something else. I feel that they somehow epitomise womanhood better than women who play the role.
I don't know why we started bringing in only females particularly in the 50s and 60s, in Kuchipudi and all these other styles. This craze for bringing in the female dancer was so great. They thought that she was something people liked to see on the stage. They started bringing in so many of them - in the beginning it was alright to have both of them dance. Now, somehow, with film and everything else, it has given you a mindset where you are concentrating only on the body of the woman. Which is easy on the eyes. I don't think that is a really nice way of looking at the dancer. You look at the dance.
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