Tag Archive for Bharata Natyam

Krishnan Receives Special Citation from Dance Studies Association

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Congratulations to WUP author Hari Krishnan, whose book Celluloid Classicism: Early Tamil Cinema and the Making of Bharatanatyam received a special citation from the 2020 de la Torre Bueno© First Book Award Committee. 

The de la Torre Bueno First Book Award is an annual award offered by the Dance Studies Association for the best first book published in English in the field of dance studies. The de la Torre Bueno prizes are made possible by the generosity of Mary Bueno.

2020 de la Torre Bueno®First Book Special Citation:

“Hari Krishnan’s Celluloid Classicism: Early Tamil Cinema and the Making of Modern Bharatanatyam is an invaluable addition to scholarship on Bharatanatyam in the crucial period between the 1930s and 1950s, offering an impeccably researched and well-argued revision of the common recounting of this phase of the dance’s history which has it that devadasis, if they kept dancing, went into film while Brahmin women dominated the stage, and discourses on caste and morality kept the two realms separate. Krishnan’s archival work is impeccable: combining interviews with readings of key films and reconstructions of lost works using songbooks. Throughout, he is deeply attuned to gender, class, and caste, especially in charting devadasi genealogies in early cinematic works. He includes invaluable reflections on the complexity of working artists’ lives in these crucial periods, and argues persuasively that specific dimensions of some lives undergird the cinematic invention of “classical” bharatanatyam as a middle-class form.”

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Announcing “Moving Bodies, Navigating Conflicts”

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“Meticulously researched and thoughtfully argued, Moving Bodies makes a case for understanding dance as central to ethnic conflict while also describing dance as a vehicle for resistance.”
—Nandini Sikand, author of Languid Bodies, Grounded Stances: The Curving Pathway of Neoclassical Odissi Dance 

This book provides a fascinating account of a dance form as a mapping tool of the politics of identity that interrogates the limits and possibility of thinking about citizenship.”
—Rachmi Diyah Larasati, author of The Dance That Makes You Vanish: Cultural Reconstruction in Post-Genocide Indonesia

How can dance be sustained by its practitioners in the unstable political and geographical landscape of war? This question lies at the heart of Moving Bodies, Navigating Conflict: Practicing Bharata Natyam in Colombo, Sri Lanka , a groundbreaking ethnographic examination of dance practice in Colombo, Sri Lanka, during the civil war (1983–2009), which claimed more than 100,000 lives. It is the first book of scholarship on bharata natyam (a classical dance originating in India) in Sri Lanka, and the first on the role of dance in the country’s war, between the Sinhalese-Buddhist–led government and the separatists, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which had fought for an independent state for the Tamil minority.

Focusing on women bharata natyam dancers, Ahalya Satkunaratnam shows how they navigated conditions of conflict and a neoliberal, global economy, resisted nationalism and militarism, and advocated for peace. Her interdisciplinary methodology combines historical analysis, methods of dance studies, and dance ethnography. With the war, dance was given a desired symbolic value that hid undesired bodies and was simultaneously a means of ascribing bodies value—materially, rhetorically, and visually. Satkunaratnam examines the relationships between aesthetics, embodied forms, and political work, the intersections of gender and sexuality with cultural practice and ethnic identity, and the experience of war and militarism in Sri Lanka. War charges dance with additional value, as cultural representations are desired by forces of nationalism and conflict. Yet, argues Satkunaratnam, dance practice can also become a vehicle for the individual to resist such claims.

AHALYA SATKUNARATNAM is professor of arts and humanities at Quest University Canada located in the unceded territories of the Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) peoples. A dancer and choreographer, she has performed across the United States, Canada, India, and Sri Lanka. Her creative work has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Illinois Arts Council.

Hari Krishnan’s “Celluloid Classicism”

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In his book Celluloid Classicism, Hari Krishnan focuses on the representation of Bharatanatyam dance in Tamil Cinema between the late 1920s and 1950s. Krishnan is the first scholar to explore this particular relationship between film and dance in depth.

At Wesleyan University’s 43rd Annual Navaratri Festival on October 12th, Krishnan moderated a Q&A with Dr. Yashoda Thakore, who during her presentation commented on the influence of cinema on pieces in her performance. Dr. Thakore, a highly accomplished Kuchipudi and Devadasi Nrityam artiste, presented an excerpt of Kuchipudi dance, a style explored in Krishnan’s book.

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Photo by Wesleyan University Center for the Arts

Kuchipudi is one of eleven major Indian classical dances. Originating in the town of Kuchipudi, it has roots in religious art and the Hindu Sanskrit text of Natya Shastra. The style is known as a “drama-dance,” the drama expressed through different hand gestures and facial expressions. Krishnan’s book presents the various influences on Kuchipudi dance throughout its development, drawing on research that “examines how instantiations of dance in the cinema contributed to the formation of a regional or nationalized art form of Kuchipudi.” Telugu cinema in particular can be traced throughout Kuchipudi’s development. Thakore referenced the accompaniment of gongs in her Kuchipudi excerpt as having ties to representations in South Indian film.

 

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Photos by Wesleyan University Center for the Arts

Krishnan will present his work at the Annual Conference of South Asia at the University of Wisconsin in this weekend. His presentation will draw on research from Celluloid Classicism, focusing on the complex relationship that renowned South Indian dancer Rukmini Arundale had with Tamil Cinema.

Celluloid Classicisma: Early Tamil Cinema and the Making of Modern Bharatanatyam is out this month, from Wesleyan University Press. Join us to celebrate with Dr. Krishnan at RJ Julia Bookstore, located at 413 Main Street in Middletown, Connecticut, on December 3rd at 7 PM.

Stepping into South Indian Dance at Wesleyan University Press

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Entering the Cross Street Dance Studio at Wesleyan University, May 7, 2018 for the Bharata Natyam III performance, there are folded chairs along the studio’s back wall and red cushions evenly spaced on the floor. Filling in with Bharata Natyam I students, Wesleyan faculty, friends, and family, the audience reaches the edge of the stage’s bounds. In rhythmic step, the three students of Hari Krishnan’s Bharata Natyam III class enter the studio and introduce the program of five dances: Alarippu, Jatisvaram, Svarajati, Padam, and Tillana. The lights shift to a soft blue hue like the night sky and the performance commences.

Portraying the erotic desires of a lover praying to Lord Krishna, the five dances choreographed by Professor Hair Krishnan, culminate in a series of unified movements followed by interpretive solos by each dancer, capturing the emotions, Shringara, Bhayanaka, and Shanta.

Bharata nātyam is a form of classical South Indian dance, which has been a part of the international stage since the mid-nineteenth century, yet has seen an accelerated circulation since the late twentieth century. Recognizing the importance of this art form, Wesleyan University Press has published multiple titles addressing the dance form, its artists, and visual-vocal practices.

 

In At Home in the World: Bharata Natyam on the Global Stage by Janet O’Shea, the globalization of the classical form and its adaptations alongside social movements and questioning of tradition is brought to the forefront. Written as an introduction of the form’s history for new learners, At Home in the World, pushes against the rigidity of tradition and invites transformation of form.

 

Widely considered one of the greatest performance artists of the twentieth century and the greatest living dancer of traditional bharata nātyam of her time, T. Balasaraswati was an unforgettable dancer, musician, and teacher whose influence on the western stage is still prevalent today. Since her and her family’s artist residencies at Wesleyan University during the 1960s and 1980s, bharata nātyam remains a staple of the dance department, inspiring the innovative choreography of today’s dancers. The first of its kind, the deeply engaging biography, Balasaraswati: Her Art & Her Life by Douglas M. Knight Jr., writes of T. Balasaraswati (his mother-in-law) and her family’s artistry as a force which brought the tradition of southern India to the western stage.

 

Written from the musician’s perspective, Solkattu Manual: An Introduction to the Rhythmic Language of South Indian Music by Professor David P. Nelson of Wesleyan University, is a nod to the complexity of bharata nātyam as not only a dance form, but a visual and audio-engaging art form. Paired with 150 video lessons, Solkattu Manual is the first immersive hands-on introduction to South Indian music and rhythm of its kind. A more advanced study guide, Konnakkol, will be available from Wesleyan in 2019.