Bridging the gap between artistes and the common man

We all are fascinated by the passions that drive intrepid individuals to risk the uncertainties of lives dedicated to the performing arts but what of the stories of those passionate about documenting these artists?

Dr Sunil Kothari’s involvement, exploring and sharing his passion for dance as a scholar, critic and author, dates back to the 1950s. He shared his journey along with dance critic-writer Leela Venkataraman and celebrated dance photographer Avinash Pasricha recently as part of a panel discussion organised by Interface Media and Sudhaya in collaboration with the India International Centre, New Delhi.  In my last article, I wrote of the impressions shared by Leelaji and Avinash but was unable to do justice to Sunil bhai’s story in the space remaining and promised this follow-up.

Sunil Kothari, the youngest of 13 children of a Gujarati baniya family, shared his thoughts on dance writing and his transition from a chartered accountant to recognition as a world-renowned dance scholar. The journey was one of discovering gem after gem along the path as he learned the craftsmanship to construct and share a vision of a beautiful bejewelled mala of aesthetics.

He fondly related his mother’s one anna bribe for memorising each of eighth Sanskrit shlokas which gained him a lifelong base. Exposed to Bharatanatyam, he started classes; seeing Sitara Devi’s Kathak, his eyes were opened to an individual classical dancer expressing multiple characters; at the Bombay Library in 1957, he discovered the impressive Marg Magazine issue on Bharatanatyam and realised he had never even heard of Kuchipudi or Bhagavat Mela till reading Mohan Kokhar’s article.  

The opportunity to see Rukmini Devi’s production of Sita Swayamvara bowled him over as did an invitation to join her for breakfast the next morning and an invitation to join her extraordinary dance institution, Kalakshetra. His mother called her “a very clever woman” and nixed his going which he still feels was a terrible mistake.

Mulk Raj Anand was perhaps the most influential person in Sunil's development. Mr Anand wrote the internationally acclaimed Untouchable in 1935 during his 20 years in England, earning a PhD in Philosophy, developing his friendships with the Bloomsbury group and making a name as an author. Back in India, he founded Marg magazine in 1946 with the intention of it being a loose encyclopedia of the arts of India and related civilisations. Mulk uncle, as Sunil called him, encouraged at every stage of his growing career writing on dance, though his family was clear that becoming a chartered accountant was non-negotiable. His routine soon became an hour of reading any and everything on dance at the Bombay Library before going to his office.

In Beryl De Zoete’s 1953 book, The Other Mind: A Study of Dance in South India, he came across the analogy in a Buddhist story of the joy of watching a fish jump in the water, making the philosophical comparison that writing about dance can approach the joy of having seen it for readers. I would add that Beryl De Zoete’s scholarship on dance and drama in Bali as well as history of art have inspired generations of dance aficionados. With a part-time position as a professor/ lecturer in accounting, he continued to soak up every dance experience. At the 1957 Maharashtra All-India Dance Festival, he discovered two of the three women whom he feels had greatest influence on his life: Mrinalini Sarabhai, Chandralekha, “a fellow Guju-bhai”, and later, Kumudini Lakhia. These strong, independent women invited him to see rehearsals during composition and encourage dialogue during the process. He made it a point never to share what one said to another while maintaining the right to go to any.

The masked martial arts based dance of Seraikella was the focus of a 1968 specially commissioned issue of Marg magazine which made it possible for Sunil to discover, research, photograph and write  about the dances and elaborate rituals associated annually with Chaitra Parva. Guru Kedarnath  Sahoo shared the techniques based on the daily  chores of women as well as nature, with Sunil and, I am fortunate to say, he did with me approximately a decade later.

I was amused when he recalled that the palace accommodation promised was simply a dilapidated old bungalow as I vividly recall my first visit there in 1981, seeing the stained glass window panes illuminating the royal charpoy with bricks holding up one leg!

Most people may not be aware that Jatin Das, one of India’s foremost visual artists, is from Baripada in the Mayurbhanj district of Odisha, home to a non-masked form of Chhau that also developed under royal patronage though with more emphasis on articulated body movement like its cousin-sister Odissi. Thanks to Jatin, Sunil was hosted during Chaitra Parva in Baripada and had the great good fortune to meet the Odiya cultural scholar Jivan Pani who made it possible to gain an understanding of this remarkable tradition. I love to tease Jatin Das that in 1975 he sincerely advised me not to continue training in Mayurbhanj Chhau as he accepted the traditional understanding that such vigorous movement was damaging for the female physiology, irrespective of new knowledge of similar demands of  ballet and modern dance on the body.

The period between 1957 and 59 were great for both Sunil and developments in classical Indian dance. He was amazed to see the abstracted analysis of the geometric planes of Bharatanatyam in an article by Dr. Kapila Vatsayayan.

Along with the pantheon of greats in dance, including Pt. Birju Maharaj's uncles, Shambhu Maharaj and Lachhu Maharaj, Sunil discovered new dimensions in sanchari bhava watching Balasaraswati’s iconic Krishna Nee Begani Baro and the never-to-be-forgotten Draupadi receiving cloth from Krishna to save her from humiliation after the Pandavas lost the game of dice. The next day Shambu Maharaj sat with a shawl on legs, opening a new world in his understanding of sanchari bhava in Kathak.

The ethereal vision of Manipuri Ras on Kartik Purnima seen in Imphal made Sunil resolve to give up what felt like a useless life as Nariman Point chartered accountant. The 1959 or 1960 scholarship to travel to the Northeast to document Manipuri, Sattriya and other forms was the beginning of his fulltime commitment to his life as a dance critic and scholar. He made it a point to see the proof of his reviews before they were printed, explaining to editors that he knew from accounting that small errors matter.

The opportunity to travel abroad was the result of interest from British readers in a Seraikella and Mayurbhanj Chhau collaborative book done with Jivan Pani.

With a small scholarship from British Council to visit London and many letters of introduction from Mulk Raj Anand, he was encouraged to discover the other ways in which the body can move. He discussed and discovered how critics wrote about ballet and learned the basics of the classical genre.  Maurice Bejart invited Sunil to his Avignon Festival to see the ballet Bhakti which Sunil couldn’t relate to, performed as it was in ballet point shoes. However, he later shared the festival-in-front-of-a-monument concept with Mulk Raj Anand which was the impetus for the Modera Dance Festival in Gujarat which further inspired Khajuraho, Mukteswar and other temple festivals.

By coincidence, in London in 1968, Sunil resided at the same artists’ commune where my friends in Julian Beck’s The Living Theatre invited me to stay after attending an International Puppetry Festival in Wales. I recall asking Sunil to explain dance mudras to me and taking careful notes. He also shared the excitement of interviewing Nureyev, the most famous ballet dancer in the world, at that time.

Though he saw contemporary dance in London, Paris and Zurich, Sunil found it truly made sense when he understood from Chandralekha how the male gaze informs dance viewing. Her use of the concept of the spine as a metaphor for women’s energy expanded his understanding of energy in dance. From Kumudini Lakhia, he understood that she valued how much could be learned from a master like Shambu Maharaj but didn’t want to be a carbon copy. He recalled her feminist Shakuntala and her sensitive understanding of space which led to unique choreography such as a male dancer circling a female soloist with Kathak chakkars.

In the US, he met Hanya Holm (one of the founders of modern dance in America and a remarkable educator) and visited The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts which houses perhaps the world’s most extensive combinations of circulating, reference and rare archival dance collections. In 1978, Sunil visited Hawaii for the Asian Dance Conference at the American Dance Guild on Research in Dance. I was so grateful to him as after I had performed Manipuri Ras and Natraj in Mayurbhanj, he along with Mohan Khokar convinced  the Western experts that Chhau was a real Indian dance form and that it was genuine and performed correctly — the Western experts had never seen it before anytime.

Calling the 1984 NCPA East-West Dance Encounter in Mumbai as one of the finest conferences he had ever attended, Sunil ended by encouraging young writers to focus on dance, recommended all to read the fine dance journal Nartanam, and advised them to guard against the negative aspects of  Indian classical dance, such as fake religiosity, numbing sentimentality, senseless competitiveness within the solo traditions and both mystification and Bolly-ification.

I loved his final quote from Dr. Kapila Vatsayayan which I hope I have noted close to the original. “Culture is what you are; in terms of your human relationships it lies in what the essence, when all else is lost, I do believe dance will still remain. The life of reproduction and life of action have to be balanced and within that lies your own intellectual curiosity, roaming, exploration and investigation and if these four qualities are there, then something can happen.”

The writer 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.