Dance Footage of Balasaraswati at the 1963 Edinburgh Festival

Once again, BritishPathé's digitized archive holds another rare gem of Indian dance: brief footage of the legendary devadasi T. Balasaraswati giving a dance performance at the 1963 Edinburgh Festival in Scotland!  The Indian portion of the video actually begins at 3:04 with veena player Narayana Menon showing his instrument and then playing a Bach sonata.  Balasaraswati's piece begins at 3:43, shows brief shots of her nattuvanar (who is he I wonder?) and musicians on the left, and closes with a nice, crisp closeup of Bala's face ending at 4:06.  Last, harmonica artist Larry Adler performs a musical trio piece with Ali Akbar Khan and Ravi Shankar's tabla player Allah Rakha. Take a look:

What an excellent video find!  This means the number of extant recordings of Bala's dance can be increased by one.  Somehow I missed this video before when I searched through BritishPathé's archive after learning of the incredible Baroda devadasi footage and found clips of Uday Shankar, Simkie, Ram Gopal, and others.  The video's keywords don't help much since Bala's name is spelled "Balasvarasvati."  While the clip is extremely short and not what I would consider Bala's best dancing (and the sound doesn't seem to match the visuals), it is very rare and can be added to the archival record of Bala's work. 

Douglas Knight devotes a few pages of his biography on Bala to her performance at the Edinburgh Festival.  Some of the musicians who came along with her were family, and others included Sarojini Kumaraswami, a student of Jayammal.  Knight writes some delightful passages about Bala's festival experiences:

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9 comments Balasaraswati, Rare Real-Life Footage

Film Classical Dances of Roshan Kumari

I’ve found two new Roshan Kumari film dances online! One seems to have not been available for public view until recently thanks to Angel (Basanta Bahara) and the other shows her dancing pure Kathak in a Films Division documentary (Kathak) that I've uploaded.

I’ve blogged before about her exquisite Kathak in Indian cinema, but I’ve never done a dedicated post and thought it was high time.  For a nice overview of Roshan Kumari’s background, I recommend a visit to an informational page about her created by one of her students, Mukta Joshi.  I also recommend visiting Richard's post about her at his Dances on the Footpath blog, where I'm quite sure I first learned about Roshan.

I want to get straight to talking about her exquisite Kathak.  What I love most about her style, and what is featured in most of her film dances, is her explosive nritta (pure, non-interpretive dance).  Most of the Kathak found in Indian films tends toward the courtesan/Mujra style of Kathak with a focus on abhinaya (expressive interpretation), lyrical poetry, and a slower pace to show off the dancer's feminine charms.  In cases where the pace quickens to feature footwork and spins, the dances still aren't up to par and the dancer's lack of lengthy Kathak training usually shows (or in the case of Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baaje, the dancer (Gopi Krishna) is clearly trained but "spices up" the dance for film so much that it strays from classical Kathak).  Film Kathak often features close-up shots of the dancer's footwork, but it's almost always a shadow of the real thing.  There are a few film dances, however, that are gleaming exceptions to the rule in their presentation of rhythmic, technical Kathak, and the star of this style is undoubtedly Roshan Kumari.  She is responsible for the best technical Kathak in Indian cinema, I say! 

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13 comments Bengali, Documentary, Kathak, Roshan Kumari