Only two documentaries are said to have been made on the legendary devadasi/Bharatanatyam dancer T. Balasaraswati (Sruti magazine). The first was a 1962 recording titled Balasaraswati produced by Wesleyan University in the US, and the second was a 1976 documentary titled Bala directed by Satyajit Ray.
The Wesleyan recording appears to be available for purchase [Update: no longer locatable now] and short clips from it are on YouTube, but the Satyajit Ray documentary is as elusive as can be! I don't think it's ever been commercially released, and only a few film studies programs and government archives seem to have copies which are unfortunately rarely screened. As luck would have it, this week I found a copy of the rare documentary online. Blocky artifacts due to apparent heavy compression made for a less-than-ideal viewing experience, so I cleaned up the video to make it as presentable as possible given the source. I rarely post entire films, but I'm presenting this one for not only the educational value of discussing it here but also because it is an important archival recording of a critical figure in the history of India's classical dance traditions. Ray himself apparently saw the film's "main value as archival" and he "put on film a rare performer for future generations to marvel at" (Robinson).
Here is the wonderful documentary; time markers of interest (if you watch the video on YouTube you can click on the times in the description and go straight to that point of the video): 2:07 - Bala demonstrating hand gestures 3:57 - Bala singing and performing abhinaya 7:00 - Bala speaking in English 8:29 - An elderly Uday Shankar speaking about Bala 9:58 - Bala's Krishna Ne Begane Baro dance by the ocean 18:58 - Bala's varnam dance with her musical ensemble. (Note - A better version of Bala is now available on YouTube; please see my June 8 post. I have not yet removed my version below in case others have linked to/embedded it).
The Wesleyan recording appears to be available for purchase [Update: no longer locatable now] and short clips from it are on YouTube, but the Satyajit Ray documentary is as elusive as can be! I don't think it's ever been commercially released, and only a few film studies programs and government archives seem to have copies which are unfortunately rarely screened. As luck would have it, this week I found a copy of the rare documentary online. Blocky artifacts due to apparent heavy compression made for a less-than-ideal viewing experience, so I cleaned up the video to make it as presentable as possible given the source. I rarely post entire films, but I'm presenting this one for not only the educational value of discussing it here but also because it is an important archival recording of a critical figure in the history of India's classical dance traditions. Ray himself apparently saw the film's "main value as archival" and he "put on film a rare performer for future generations to marvel at" (Robinson).
Here is the wonderful documentary; time markers of interest (if you watch the video on YouTube you can click on the times in the description and go straight to that point of the video): 2:07 - Bala demonstrating hand gestures 3:57 - Bala singing and performing abhinaya 7:00 - Bala speaking in English 8:29 - An elderly Uday Shankar speaking about Bala 9:58 - Bala's Krishna Ne Begane Baro dance by the ocean 18:58 - Bala's varnam dance with her musical ensemble. (Note - A better version of Bala is now available on YouTube; please see my June 8 post. I have not yet removed my version below in case others have linked to/embedded it).
