Saumya Mittal - End Term Assignment and Self-Reflective essay
Prompt 4: Description of a dance performance.
I have chosen a Kathak choreography of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet produced under the guidance of India's leading Kathak exponent Birju Maharaj. The full video is not available due to copyright issues but I am including links to some clips of the production.
Romeo and Juliet in Kathak
The
year 2018 saw the end of several Delhi-based dance and Shakespeare enthusiasts’
long wait to watch Birju Maharaj’s production of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in Kathak which in the
years since its conception has been performed worldwide but only once in Delhi,
more than a decade ago in 2004. Since then, it could only be found mentioned in
books like Shakespeare: The Indian Icon
edited by Dr. Vikram Chopra, where it has been commented upon as one of the
many Indian adaptations of Shakespearean drama.
Waiting
for the curtain to rise, I pondered over the sheer volume of adaptations of
Shakespeare’s more popular plays attempted in varying forms. And what better to
adapt than an eternal love story of “star-crossed lovers” destined to a tragic
end by human hatred – a trope that will find universal recognition. Not four
years ago I sat in the same auditorium - Kamani auditorium in Mandi House -watching Neemrana Foundation’s French
opera production of Romeo and Juliet
with an Indo-European cast that was able to communicate the magic of
Shakespeare clubbed with opera to a largely non-French audience with little
knowledge or understanding of operatic conventions. As the singers’ voices
intertwined with the notes of the orchestra to generate a range of moods,
language barriers were removed and the audience were pulled into the aura of
the performance.
While
the opera rendered comprehension of words unnecessary, the Kathak ballet did
away with them altogether. First developed around seventeen years ago, Birju
Maharaj’s production choreographed by Saswati Sen is the first adaptation of Romeo and Juliet in an Indian dance form
and is reminiscent of western classical ballet. Apart from the principle
characters, a host of around forty dancers make up the cast of citizens and members
of each household.
The
opening scene is set in a town market where a quarrel between the Montagues and
the Capulets results in injury to both parties and the prince is forced to
intervene. This is the context in which the rest of the familiar story – Romeo and
Juliet’s instantaneous love at the Capulet ball, there secret wedding, Tybalt’s
death followed by Romeo’s banishment, the plot to prevent Juliet’s marriage to
Paris which ultimately ends in tragedy – unfolds in eleven scenes. Stage lighting
and elaborate sets have been effectively used to induce the location, mood and
time of day of each scene.
The
Kathak ballet does not turn into an indigenised version of Shakespeare as the
feel of a European culture is retained through the innovative use of costumes,
music and choreography. The costumes are a creative fusion of Renaissance
Italian attire and traditional Kathak dresses. Angrakhas have incorporated fabrics
and styles reminiscent of European dresses and ball gowns too have been used,
but all these have been designed such that they lend themselves to the aesthetics
of Kathak and accentuate the dancers’ movements. The music, composed by Pandit
Birju Maharaj and leading Indian Jazz practitioner Lois Banks, combines ragas,
Kathak bols and rhythms, and jazz to create a score that as easily renders
itself to pure Kathak sections as to ballroom dancing.
The
choreography too shows influences of western dance styles. Saswati Sen took
inspiration for this project from western classical ballet. Ballets of Romeo and Juliet have been produced
around the world starting with British choreographer Frederick Ashton’s 1955
adaptation and Sen has desired to play Juliet ever since her first viewing of a
production in New York in 1974. She could see in the movements of classical
ballet similarities to Kathak – hand gestures akin to Kathak mudras and
pirouettes in the spirit of chakkars.
Saswati
Sen has ingeniously borrowed elements from other dance forms while staying true
to the spirit of Kathak. These are most visible in the group dance sequences. The
second market place scene where the Nurse brings Juliet’s letter to Romeo opens
with a dance depicting the bustle of the market. The dancers can be seen cross-linking
their arms to form a chain and moving sideways with small jumps and skips together
in a line, changing direction after every few steps. Those even slightly
familiar with ballet will immediately recognise this oft-used ballet formation.
The performers’ actions, however, stay rooted in Kathak, creating a fascinating
tribute rather than oddity. The Spanish dance form of Flamenco can also be easily
detected, especially in the sections depicting tensions between the two households.
Apart from the opening scene skirmish where women dancers take postures and
body profiles specific to Flamenco, however, the occurrence of this form is
less deliberate and more incidental. There are striking parallels between the
dance styles of Kathak and Flamenco – both make significant use of footwork and
spins, and some of the body movements and poses are similar too. Add to that
the fact that Flamenco’s emotional intensity and proud and upright carriage is
suited to the tense mood created onstage. The aesthetics of the two dance forms
are so similar that given the right mood and dress – gowns with a scarf or a
flower in the hair – as is the case here, Kathak artists seem to be performing
Flamenco.
The
production draws not only from Western styles but also from a rich tradition of
Indian dance dramas. The Maharaj family, which has been practicing Kathak for some
generations now and dictates the Lucknow gharana style, is known for creating
and popularising large scale productions in a form which has traditionally favoured
solo performances. Birju Maharaj, the current head of the Maharaj clan, has
carried this legacy forward with several of his own choreographies. The choreographic
works under discussion can be seen as one more contribution to the dance tradition,
style and vast network of artists that comprise what has now come to be called ‘Birju
Maharaj Parampara’. Another continuing tradition that started in the
mid-twentieth century with support from the post-independence nationalist
project is that of professional classical dance dramas produced by institutions
like Sriram Bhartiya Kala Kendra and Natya Ballet Centre. These productions often
incorporate other Indian dance forms suited to particular situations in the
story. Mayurbhanj Chhau, a martial dance form, is used in fight sequences while
folk forms like Garba are blended with classical dance to depict a festive
atmosphere among the masses. Saswati Sen incorporates the former dance style in
the opening scene brawl and Romeo and Tybalt’s duel while folk has been assimilated
in the second marketplace scene where the dancers start moving around in a
circle using wide arm movements and spins inspired from Garba.
Birju
Maharaj further fits Romeo and Juliet
into the dance drama tradition rooted in Hindu mythology when he compares it to
Radha and Krishna, another pair of star-crossed lovers forced by society to
meet in secrecy and doomed to separation. Maharaj even goes so far as to say
that if the jazz music is replaced by flute instrumental, we would have a
musical about Radha and Krishna.
The
universal theme of love that finds ground in every society has led to a number
of cinematic adaptations of Romeo and Juliet. Influences of the 1968 film
directed by Franco Zeffirelli are evident in Saswati Sen’s work. In the movie
the members of the two households are distinguished by the colour scheme of
their clothes. While the Capulets wear shades of orange and red, the Montagues
seem to prefer blue and purple tones. Sen reverses this scheme, dressing the
Capulets in purple and Montagues in orange, but the similarity in colour choice
is inescapable. Plot-wise too, Sen follows Zeffirelli. She has introduced an
entire scene portraying the affectionate relationship between a child-like
Juliet and her nurse. This is an addition made by Zeffirelli in his movie that
cannot be found in the original play. Also, in the movie Romeo literally runs
away from the scene as long as possible to avoid a confrontation with Juliet’s
taunting cousin Tybalt soon after the young lovers marry secretly. This is
another oddity introduced by Zeffirelli which Sen adheres to.
Western
critics have praised Zeffirelli for casting young actors in the titular roles,
since older artists in their twenties playing the titular characters in other
adaptations take away from the whirlwind, unthinking romance characteristic of teenage.
Curiously, in the Kathak ballet the characters are in their teens but the
artists portraying them are much older. Saswati Sen, aged sixty five,
proficiently represents a sixteen year old teenager in love while Romeo is
played by Deepak Maharaj, Birju Maharaj’s son who is twenty years younger than
Sen. The artists’ ages vanish as they go through the many trials faced by the
characters. The inability of older film artists to successfully inhabit a young
couple may be attributed to some extent to the fact that a film involves close
ups of the face which would make the age disparity between the actor and her
character apparent while a stage performance is supposed to be watched from a
distance aided by which a skilled dancer can manage to hide her age. However, this
is made possible only because dance keeps an artist young in spirit and by
Sen’s and Deepak Maharaj’s superior expressions.
Saswati
Sen’s genius must be commended in taking a play with some very iconic lines,
stripping it of all dialogue and still retaining the aura of Romeo and Juliet.
The balcony scene contains some of Shakespeare’s most famous lines, “O Romeo
Romeo, Wherefore art though Romeo…”, without which the play would seem incomplete.
Sen manages to attain the same effect through the use of elaborate stage
settings and efficient choreography. Juliet standing in her balcony reaching
out to Romeo standing below who tries but is unable to close the distance has
become the defining moment of the show which is used in all news coverage and
promotions to represent the production just as Shakespeare’s balcony scene has
become the most familiar trope of his Romeo
and Juliet – adaptations may tamper with the setting or ending but mostly
retain the balcony scene.
Over
the years since its conception, Romeo and
Juliet in Kathak has toured all over India and the United States and has
met with critical acclaim and full houses everywhere. It is a fascinating
experiment that successfully manages to combine a Renaissance English drama
with an Indian classical dance form, sprinkled with elements from other dance
forms, styles of music and cinema, and yet manages to retain the charm of both
Shakespeare and Kathak. Coming out of the auditorium, one cannot help but wonder at
the genius of Saswati Sen’s in choreography and Birju Maharaj’s and Lois Bank’s
music.
Self-Reflective Process Essay
For
me, Ways of Reading was a paper with an interesting syllabus, including some
texts I had been meaning to read for a long time but had never gotten around to
due to inaccessibility of the works or sheer laziness. In the four months of
classes, I was exposed to a diverse range of literary masterpieces, each work containing
some unique element to be explored ranging from form to genre to writing style
and so on. Despite – or perhaps because of – being a literature student my
appreciation of poetry was limited to the works of canonical writers. Through
the course of this class I came to appreciate the compositions of lesser known
writers and realised that there was no fixed formula for writing. The workshop
mode of classes was a welcome break from regular classroom teaching and created
a platform for open discussion. The small writing tasks set in each class pushed
me to think creatively outside the classroom as well and I found myself
observing my surroundings more carefully and noticing aspects I had never paid
attention to before. As a result, I started writing more conscientiously as I
tried to work through the various ways of expressing something to find words
that best conveyed the emotion.
My
attempts at creative writing had been limited to a few school assignments and
some poems I wrote as a child, which were of course bound to be appreciated by
my audience of one – my mother. I had never written with an aim to publish my
work on a public platform with a critical readership. So there was never any
need to make conscious choices while writing. With the assignments came the
need to write well with an audience in mind. So I found myself constantly
struggling with the question of what comprised good poetry. Some of my preconceived
notions were already breaking down as a result of class discussions, but while
writing I still found myself resorting to a fixed metre and rhyme scheme. Three
of my poems turned out to have a fixed structure, and one followed the strict
conventions of a villanelle. I undertook the task of deliberately producing a poem
in free verse, but was constantly wondering whether it was “poetic” enough. In-class
analysis of our own and our classmates’ poems became a great way of getting rid
of these insecurities about writing. This course also gave me the opportunity
to work on a vague concept I had in mind, that of adapting English poetry to
dance, a form I find I can best express myself in. So the written mode of
self-expression got combined with an expressive performance art form to create
a curious fusion of visual art and performance poetry. Such an experimental
work was possible only because of a creative course concept that allowed me the
freedom to interpret a prompt on creating a visual narrative to include dance
as a visual art. Working on the second creative assignment was equally challenging
and refreshing. I wanted to try something I did not feel confident about, in order to broaden
the scope of my writing. This turned out to creative non-fiction. Being
used to literature research assignments, I feared that it would turn into an
academic essay rather than a creative piece. I am not sure to what extent I was
able to fulfil the demands of the chosen prompt, but I am glad that I got the
space to write about something that left an impact on me. For me, this course has been
an exercise in self exploration and analysing, along with a variety of literary
works, the limits set by my own mind.
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