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| V.S. Muthuswami Pillai (source: Sruti) |
While reading about the hereditary nattuvanar of yesteryear V.S. Muthuswami Pillai in
Sruti magazine (Issues 319 and 320), I was surprised to learn that he was the sole guru and early film choreographer of the most brilliant dancing duo of Indian cinema, Sayee-Subbulakshmi! He was also responsible for some authentic Bharathanatyam numbers in Indian cinema, not only of Sayee and Subbulakshmi but also Vyjayanthimala and other artists. The author of the
Sruti articles, Sujatha Vijayaraghavan, presents a portrait of V.S. Muthuswami's life from his youth in a hereditary dance and music community to his dance direction in Indian cinema and finally his "French period" where he reached his creative peak teaching foreign students from France and creating his own style. Sujatha also links Sayee and Subbulakshmi to relatives P.A. Periyanayaki and R. Padma!
Thus my much-delayed "Remembering Film Choreographers" series officially begins! In the
series kick-off post, I had revealed my discovery that almost all of the top-notch classical film dances featured on my blog were choreographed by members of the traditional dance community or eminent dancers; in the case of Tamil films, by hereditary Bharathanatyam nattuvanars. It's a subject that has received precious little attention, popular or scholarly,
until recently.
Look beyond the sparkling veneer of these film dances and one finds that they were often the products of economic necessity by the hereditary community whose stigmatized way of life underwent tremendous upheaval during the reform movements surrounding women, temple dedication, and dance in the early twentieth century in India. Many nattuvanars migrated to urban areas like Madras (now Chennai) where upper-class/caste girls from outside the traditional community desired to learn the dance in newly-formed institutions. Films provided another avenue of opportunity, and due to the reach of the medium into the popular consciousness, the film dances of these nattuvanars were partly responsible for creating awareness of Bharatanatyam among the masses and surely contributed to the dance "revival's" success and acceptance. To the delight of historians and archivists, these film dances also serve as a visual record of the early dance form, the nattuvanar's style, and in some cases glimpses of the nattuvanar himself. And to the delight of this blog, these film dances are damn good!
Because there is so much information to cover, I've
split up this post topic into three parts. In this first part here, I will focus on V.S. Muthuswami Pillai's life (hereafter just "Muthuswami Pillai") and choreography in films before and outside of Sayee and Subbulakshmi. In the second post, Sayee-Subbulakshmi's training with Muthuswami Pillai and their film choreographies, both by Muthuswami Pillai and other dance directors, will get center stage. And in the third part, the work of P.A. Periyanayaki and R. Padma in films and their exciting relation to Sayee-Subbulakshmi will be excavated. I suppose this is the official first post of my much-delayed "
Remembering Film Choreographers" series!
What is a Nattuvanar?
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V.S. Muthuswami Pillai demonstrating an
adavu (source:Sruti, credit: Samudri Archives) |
My favorite online articles for understanding the nattuvanar's role in Bharathanatyam dance, then and now, are "
The Rise and Fall of the Nattuvanar" by A. Seshan and "Where are the Master Gurus?" by Gowri Ramnarayan [no longer locatable at
The Hindu, but appears archived
here]. From all of the reading I have done, my understanding is that while the role of a nattuvanar (hereditary dance guru, conductor, and choreographer) in Bharathanatyam has changed significantly over the last century, nattuvanars were traditionally members of a hereditary community of non-Brahmin, professional musicians and dancers (often called Isai Velalar) that made their living through arts of their exclusive domain. At the top of the community's hierarchy were two professional and specialized ensembles performing distinctive art forms known as periya melam and chinna melam. The periya melam focused on performing stylized instrumental music to accompany temple rituals and other festivities and featured the powerful and rousing nadaswaram/nagaswaram. The chinna melam focused on devadasi dance performances led by nattuvanars who taught the devadasis of the community and conducted their performances. The dance of the chinna melam ensemble was also called names like Sadir or Dasiattam, and it was this dance that was reconstructed and named Bharatanatyam in the 1930s as nonhereditary dancers from outside the community began learning and performing the art.
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