Abstract
Certain Indian art forms are not necessarily focused on excellence at the level of technique, or on producing professional artists, but rather on creating an arts practice open and accessible to all; not on the individual artist, but on the community of practice, whereby the embodied knowledge of the form is sustained and becomes a tradition. The paradigm is the kalari, the place of practice, part of the communal space of the Kerala village, where rituals, aspects of pedagogy and an engagement with the whole person generates, nurtures and strengthens this community of practice. My paper details the ways in which the understanding of what an arts practice is, defined by India texts, specifically the Natya Shastra, and contexts, specifically the kalari, leads to the development of a unique collective of artists practising Indian art forms in Toronto. It shows how these practices engender the wholistic involvement of the participant without reference to gender, religion, caste and class. I explore in my paper how these aspects therefore make them ideal for building the community of practice, even in contexts far from their place of origin. I use examples from the work of members of IMPACT—Indian Martial and Performing Arts Collective of Toronto—several of whom were also SICI recipients, to illustrate the scope of possibilities for engagement and participation across artistic disciplines and in diverse environments.
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Notes
- 1.
Menaka Thakkar’s website.
- 2.
(Harp-Allen 1997) ‘Devadasis… were female, Hindu ritual practitioners, women who underwent training and initiation in religious-artistic practices…’.
(Hubel 2016): ‘I lament that the feminists could not see the dasis for the model of professional womanhood that they were’.
(O’Shea 2007): ‘Devadasis trained in dance and music and, unlike most other women of their time, learned to read and write. They travelled about freely in the outside world …’.
(Srinivasan 1998): ‘For the devadasis their temple attachment granted sectarian purity and the promotional avenues to pursue a prosperous career. The economic and professional benefits were considerable’.
(Viswanathan 2004): ‘Many devadasis were literate, having a level of education that women of higher social status were denied’.
- 3.
‘Our culture is Bharatanatyam, Kuchipudi, Lavni and Kathak; this is what we should be showing to the foreigners…’ Maharastra Navnirman Sena group leader Sanjay Deshpande, protesting a fashion show. Quoted in an article by Trisha Gupta, The Sunday Guardian, 22 May 2016.
- 4.
Varnam, the centrepiece of the bharatanatyam performance, is as a general rule addressed to either Vishnu or Shiva, less frequently to a king, in a tone of longing; padams and javalis are addressed to more human males, often perfunctorily identified with Krishna, Muruga or Shiva, but these are the voices of male poets speaking through the female nayika. It is sometimes argued that the female dancer, in enacting and imbuing these songs with emotion, is reclaiming the female voice. While that may be true for some exceptional performers, I do not see this as even an attempt in most dance performances.
- 5.
Thus, a padam in which a pre-pubescent girl says, ‘Why should I go to him? I’m frightened’ in which the male’s unwanted advances are enacted—holding her hand, squeezing her breasts, taking half-chewed paan from his mouth and pushing it into hers, that is, essentially describing a molestation or harassment, is made into an aesthetic event.
- 6.
The story of Surpanakha, where the female who expresses desire is characterized as a demon, and her nose and ears are cut off, is often enacted as part of the ‘sanchari’ or elaboration in varnams or kritis about Rama.
- 7.
The story of Nandanar is very often performed: he is a Dalit; therefore, he cannot enter the Shiva temple in Tirupunkur, but his great devotion causes the bull to move out of his way, giving him an unobstructed view of the deity. In Chidambaram, he burns his Dalit body on a funeral pyre, emerging out of it ‘purified’. This has become an accepted piece in the bharatanatyam repertoire.
- 8.
In the Ramayana series of dance dramas choreographed by Rukmini Devi and presented all over the world, tribal lords are portrayed as falling at the feet of Rama, Lakshmana and Sita numerous times. Rukmini Devi and others also choreographed the story of the tribal devoted to Shiva, Kannappar. While this story seems to glorify the devotion of the Kannappar, it also plays on images of tribal ignorance, in that he does not know how to properly worship the Lingam, spitting on it, giving it half-eaten food, and depends at the end, like the Nandanar story, on his disfigurement, debasement and self-sacrifice.
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Kolanad, G. (2019). Paradigms of Art Practice: The Artist Within the Community. In: Gayithri, K., Hariharan, B., Chattopadhyay, S. (eds) Nation-Building, Education and Culture in India and Canada. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6741-0_13
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