Why a Western artiste took up classical Indian dance

What is the motivation for a professionally trained western dancer to devote time to the challenges of studying classical Indian dance I find myself as curious as anyone else, despite knowing the story of my own trajectory in India and Indian dance after 17 years of ballet and modern dance training in the United States.

A non-Indian, drawn to any Hindu Bhakti tradition who discovers that Indian classical dance can be a physical expression of spiritual consciousness, has a clear motivation to wish to study dance. To a lesser degree, we can comprehend a young person outside of India, inspired by seeing the depth and beauty of India’s classical dance traditions, mustering the courage based on naïveté to come to India in hopes of mastering the art. As with all arts everywhere, many attempt, few succeed, but hopefully all retain a love and understanding from the effort.

But what of an individual who has achieved both professional mastery and a full time career performing and teaching modern dance and ballet Why leave family, home and well deserved summer and winter holidays to struggle with intricacies of classical Indian dance

I asked this question to Patrick Suzeau, Co-artistic Director with his wife Muriel Cohan of the COHAN/SUZEAU Dance Company and Professor in the University of Kansas Dance Department after he showed up on the first day of a June Odissi workshop. He cheerfully declared his intention to stay through to my 3rd workshop at the end of July before joining his wife in London for a brief holiday; before they return back to the work of choreography, teaching and performing dance in America.

Patrick’s short answer was to quote Joseph Campbell, “I follow my bliss”. The longer answer contextualises this bliss in terms of his long relationship with Indian dance and how it continues to impact the expression of his body and mind in the present.

While a student at the renowned college of performing arts, New York City’s The Juilliard School in 1969, he was first introduced to the expressive use of hands in Indian dance by a fellow student who was a member of Matteo’s Indo-American dance company. I can’t help interjecting here that the same year I asked Dance critic Sunil Kothari to explain hasta abhinaya to me when we stayed in the same London arts commune. But that is another story.

Patrick was given the opportunity to come to India in 1970 and jumped at it, falling completely in love with Indian classical dance when he saw Yamini Krishnamurthy and Sanjukta Panigrahi on the same program. After a year’s absorbing all he could by attending music and dance concert, mostly in Delhi, he returned USA to pursue a career as a western dancer.

Ballet and what is now called classical modern dance, the techniques of Graham, Cunningham, Humphrey-Limon, and Hawkins were the main focus his training and movement vocabulary, Patrick availed every opportunity in Indian dance training that came his way.

He also studied yoga, jazz, Afro-Cuban and so called “belly dance” as he believes that “For a contemporary choreographer such as myself, the fullest your embodied experience is the more you have access to a diverse movement vocabulary with which to create new works. I am not talking about a mere movement appropriation but an access to rich movement pathways which are then translated in a specific way for each new work.”

Coming to India as a young dancer influenced him in many ways. He moved slower and more consciously. He was aware of thoughtless wastage after living in a zero waste Indian era where he ate from a leaf given to a cow and drank from clay cups returned to the earth.

The legendary Limon artist and teacher, Betty Jones, taught that you didn’t have to hold onto your muscles but Patrick wasn’t ready to absorb it, after India he was. Though trained in Limon technique, performing his solos made him realize that he had “a very bound flow” in the Effort-Shape terminology of Laban. “Dance is about energy, and I was more mature after India.”

When not touring as a duet company with his wife, he studied at the Balasaraswathi School, took occasional master classes in Kathak and Manipuri and a Bharatanatyam semester course with Asha Prem at Washington University in St. Louis while teaching a residency there. He would come to India to learn a piece and still performs regularly with Asha Prem’s dance company in St. Louis.

He believes that his Indian dance training is in evidence in his works, reflected in his rhythmic approach to choreography.

Why such a focus on Indian dance Besides loving the rhythms and the use of hands, Patrick adds “What I find so compelling about Indian classical dance is also what I find deeply attractive about such works as Bach’s St. Matthews Passion, Mozart’s Requiem, Michelangelo’s Sistine chapel, Anthony Tudor’s Dark Elegies or Jose Limon’s Missa Brevis. It is an ineffable spiritual quality that transcends religion”

Performing artists feel a personal affinity to a particular esthetic that becomes a lifelong passion. Patrick feels his low center of gravity and the appeal of Odissi’s softness and sensuality that allows him to expand beyond the parameters of his strong, directed and impulsive approach to movement. He discovered that Odissi, with its constant postural adjustments (tribangi) and carving, circular movements, offers some similarities with contemporary dance in the sense that both combine postural and gestural movements. For example, the spiraling movement used to show alasa feels so contemporary to this artist who adds it into other spirals of the body.

Patrick had returned to India in 2008 to study Hasta Viniyoga and adavus in Chennai. He found significant changes from the Bharatanatyam he had learned in the 1970’s. Jatis were far more complicated, Kumbhapada was performed with the forced raised arch of Kalakshetra style, jumps were high and in general technique was more precise. Though thoroughly trained in European and American ballet all his life, he loves the aesthetic of Bharatanatyam and the feeling of groundedness.

I had forgotten how Patrick had come to Delhi to study with me in 2010 rather than any of the myriad excellent teachers available around India. He reminded me that he had initially gone to Odisha when he received a four month sabbatical. Patrick experienced a style of Odissi that felt closer to the energy and aesthetic he was used to in Bharatnatyam. It had strong stamping and minimal torso movement, beautiful to watch but not what he wanted to practice. He then realized that Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra’s style was actually what he wanted to study.

Patrick had seen my performance in1985 and found me online to see if I was in India and was teaching. I asked him if my being a fellow American influenced his choice and was pleasantly surprised when he said this was totally irrelevant; he simply recalled the dance experience and loved what he saw without registering whether I was Indian or American. A bit of digging revealed that it was at Stevens College in Missouri accompanied by Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra on Mardala, Shri Rakhal Mohanty vocal, Pt. Bhubaneswar Misra on violin and Ratikant Mohapatra on Manjiras but Patrick could not recall whether it was to live or recorded music!

Knowing that Patrick teaches an Introduction to East Indian Classical Dance course, I wondered if he actually needed continued study for meeting the needs of his students. Of course, continuing research always enriches and broadens one’s teaching, but Patrick says he does it for his own personal growth as an artist. With all good intentions of polishing what he learns sporadically during summer and winter holidays, new choreographies and life generally intervene. One way Patrick keeps his Odissi practice going during the year is by teaching the basic stepping practice in the triple-bent tribangi and squared chauk body positions to his students. Some of them have never thought of eastern culture in any context.

Patrick has to train daily as he is still an active performer. He has already studied modern dance and ballet over many decades with the master teachers based in New York City. We all understand that learning is never complete and a true artist is a lifelong learner. Besides following his own practice Patrick loves being a student.

He says, “I am fortunate in having had a rich and long career so I feel quite secure as an artist therefore I have no difficulty in being a student. It certainly keeps me in touch with what my own students are experiencing. It keeps my synapses healthy. I feel strongly that one should keep in touch with ecstatic experiences comparable to what dance offers. I love it, I love doing it.”

Sharon Lowen is a respected exponent of Odissi, Manipuri and Mayurbhanj and Seraikella Chau whose four-decade career in India was preceded by 17 years of modern dance and ballet in the US and an MA in dance from the University of Michigan. She can be contacted at sharonlowen.workshop@gmail.com