How excited I am to recently find two more visual records of Guru Gopinath dancing in the mid-1940s, one in the commercial Tamil film Mahatma Udhangarand one archival find at the British Film Institute (BFI)! Back in the dance revival decades of pre and post-independence India, Guru Gopinath was among the trained native Kathakali dancers who brought that dance form and its movement vocabulary to other parts of India and the world. Gopinath did this first through a touring partnership with the American-born dancer known as "Ragini Devi," and later by creating a Kathakali-derived accessible dance form that seems to be known today as "Kerala Natanam." Gopinath has been featured on the blog twice before in dance footage from the 1950s. First was his portly and entertaining dance with Guru Gopalakrishnan/the mohini in the mythological "Mohini Bhasmasur" sequence in the 1957 Telugu/Tamil film Mayabazar, and second was the rare archival find of brief clips from his stage performance in the U.S.S.R. in 1954 as part of the Indian Cultural Delegation. But these new finds are special because they are from a decade earlier, and feature Gopinath looking noticeably younger and thinner!
Gopinath's Dance in Mahatma Udhangar (1947, Tamil)
Mahatma Udhangar (also transliterated Mahathma, Udangar, Udankar) was an unsuccessful release directed by G. Pattu Iyer that "sank without a trace and is barely remembered today" [6], which must explain why there's so little information readily available on the film. I shared more information about Mahatma Udhangar in my last post rejoicing about finding Kumari Kamala's dance in the film.
I'm back, my excitement has spontaneously returned, and the blog has had a facelift that's still under some construction. More on all that soon, but for now, on to the content!
Every once in a while I search the interwebs to see if any cinematic/archival dances from my wishlist have surfaced. On a recent search jaunt, I was delighted to find that footage has been posted online of the great Kathak doyen, Pandit Birju Maharaj, dancing in the 1988 Hindi film Khayal Gatha ("The Khayal Saga," sometimes listed as being released in 1989). I knew Birju Maharaj had choreographed for some Kathak dances in films, but Khayal Gatha was the only instance I'd read of where he was in front of the camera, rather than behind it. Kathak hasn't made that many appearances on this blog in the past, but like those fewtimes, this is a real treat.
Pandit Birju Maharaj, for those who aren't aware of his stature, is probably the name most synonymous with Kathak dance in the last half-century, a 1930s-born acclaimed carrier of his family's now-predominant Lucknow gharana of Kathak, a critical part of the standardization and institutionalization of Kathak in the Indian post-independence dance revival and reckoning that took place in his most formative years, a beloved and very charismatic and likable performer, and an innovator within traditional boundaries. He was instrumental in popularizing the dance form in India and the world, and is still doing so today, traveling around the globe in his 80s.
It quickly became apparent in watching Khayal Gatha that Birju chose an "art film" far from the world of commercial cinema for his cinematic dance debut. (Note, I will leave out honorifics and refer to him simply as "Birju" for brevity and clarity.) Kumar Shahani, a significant name in Indian parallel/new wave cinema, was by all accounts a radical, experimental, and avant-garde filmmaker. Khayal Gatha is no exception—when I first browsed through the film I could not make any sense of it, so I found what some wiser people than I had written about the film and Shahani which helped quite a bit, but much interpretation is left for the educated viewer to decide.
Writings on the film [1,2,3,4] describe Khayal Gatha as an experimental and sensory exploration of real and invented Indian legends, traditions, and performing arts from the past five centuries to the contemporary period, many related to the vocal tradition of Khayal, a genre of North Indian/Hindustani classical/semi-classical music that is heard throughout the film and as a style features improvisation, microtones and gliding between notes, and a varied range of classical, folk, and popular sources that the film is greatly inspired by. The lead character, portrayed by actor Rajat Kapoor in his debut (whom I can never unsee as anything but the creepy pedophile in Monsoon Wedding!), is a wanderer and seeker who is at times an observer and other times takes on the personas of the various legendary figures being depicted. Plenty of allegory, abstraction, metaphor, repeated scenes, and a lack of chronological storytelling tick the experimental boxes, and the dialogues are often philosophical and meant to inspire thought. Ultimately, the film can be interpreted in very complex ways in relation to the wounds of historical loss, the human sensory experience, cyclical movements and the nature of time, and much more that's beyond the scope of this post...and beyond my comprehension.
Director Kumar Shahani used dance and music in many of his films. His work has been featured on the blog before when I posted about excitedly finding dances from Shahani’s later films Bhavantarana (1991), featuring the late Odissi Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra and other famous Odissi dancers, and Bamboo Flute (2000), featuring dances by Mohapatra as well as Alarmel Valli.
I was heartened to read that Khayal Gatha features key musical contributions (and I assume on-screen appearances) "by some of the foremost musicians from the Gwalior gharana" of Indian classical music [5]. But of course, of most interest to this blog is that the great Birju Maharaj dances in a feature film! We get to see him three times totaling about seven minutes of footage spread out over two primarily pure dance pieces and one expressive piece. There's also a Kathak dance practice scene by two women, and you know how I love a good practice dance!
Watching other performance and demonstration footage of Birju dancing online, he is among the great performers who have so imbibed and internalized a dance form and all its associated complexities that his performances look effortless and a part of his very being. For those who don't know who he is, Birju at first glance isn't the most handsome male dancer, doesn't have that "ideal" body shape, and wears simple clothing, but on watching him perform, these things quickly become irrelevant.
Dances in Khayal Gatha
Introductory Dance - Birju Maharaj's first dance in the film, and the film itself, are said to be visually inspired by Mughal miniature paintings, which often feature the "framing of a figure against a window" or vacant space[2]. From behind an empty door frame, rhythmic sounds precede Birju's movements into view. He depicts a horse and horse riding, a common sight and method of transport throughout the film as the wanderer makes his journey, and soon "gallops" off screen to a cut of his truncated dancing body framed by a window, the lighting inverted.
Birju's assuredness and style of movement is commanding! Regrettably, his dance lasts less than a minute, soon interrupted by the wandering protagonist (Rajat Kapoor) slowly walking by and gazing at the dancer in the window. The wanderer knocks on the door, and a woman answers—she (actress Alaknanda Samarth) is an oracle-type seen throughout the film in different avatars, provoking philosophical/critical thought and learning in the wanderer. The oracle leads the wanderer to her guru, and unties cloth that had been wrapped around his feet. What does that mean, I wonder? When the wanderer responds to the oracle's question "to what are you bound," her reply is, intriguingly, interpreted by cinema studies scholar Laleen Jayamanne [2]to refer to the notion of "the mere exact repetition of the form without an internalization of its spirit [being] rejected as unworthy of the tradition," a sentiment applicable to the dance tradition shown the film as well as the film's philosophical yearnings.
While I've been mostly looking back in history as I've blogged about Indian film dances for the past few years, a number of films have released in recent years with songs or scenes featuring classical dance forms. Having collected enough for a robust post and also making some great discoveries this weekend, I'm excited to take a break from research and share what the classical movie dance world has produced recently. I'm sure I've missed some—do let me know of any others!
Vara: A Blessing (2013, Coproduction) - Screened at various film festivals since it's debut but apparently not commercially released in theaters or on DVD, Vara: A Blessing has been described as "a visually stunning exploration of the cross between spiritual devotion and bodily temptation that incorporates hypnotic use of tradition Indian dance and music" and as a work "Accented by mesmerizing bursts of classical Indian dance, haunting vocals, and vivid Hindu fantasyscapes..." With choreography by the accomplished Bharatanatyam dancer Geeta Chandran, music by Nitin Sawhney, and sumptuous visuals and effects by the crew, the dances as seen in the few clips available online make the film an absolute must watch. It's not an Indian film since it's directed by the Bhutanese lama filmmaker Khyentse Norbu with help from various countried folk, but it is set in India and was made with many Indian actors, so it is perhaps a Bhutanese/Indian/international coproduction.
This is the clip that took my breath away and has me aching to watch the film. In it, the main character Lila (Odissi dancer Shahana Goswami) dances Bharatanatyam under the nattuvangam of her mother Vinata (Geeta Chandran), the village's last devadasi. Based on Variety's review of the film which describes how the tribal leader tries to "pimp out Lila" while finding a match for a woman's son, the man staring at her as she dances is likely either the son or the tribal leader. Like him, I can't keep my eyes away from Shahana's face which registers constant emotion and danger that is enhanced by the lighting design and shadows. The entire clip has an ominous, creepy tension. Thanks to Ragothaman for pointing out this clip from Chandran's Facebook page.
The late Kathak dancer Gopi Krishna (≈1933-38 to 1994) is perhaps best remembered for his dances in the 1955 Hindi film Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baaje. His dances in that film exemplified his trademark—his lightning-fast, signature version of kathak chakkar pirouettes! His film dances were much more acrobatic freeform furor than classical Kathak but nevertheless electrifying with the unbridled energy that coursed through a flurry of rotations, backbends and whiplash-fast movements. Gopi Krishna’s style of wild, joyous abandon is unlike anything I've seen and there has never been a male dancer in Indian films that has come close to matching it. In this post, I want to focus on his film dances, including three relatively rare songs that don't seem to be widely known, and also give some background information on his style, life, and legacy.
It is well known that Gopi Krishna is the nephew of famous Kathak and film dancer Sitara Devi. But I was surprised to learn in Sunil Kothari's book on Kathak5 that the dancer Gopi competes against in the video above is Chaube Maharaj—Sitara's brother and therefore Gopi's uncle! Kothari notes that Sukhdev Maharaj, a "court musician in Nepal [...] took a bold step in training his two daughters Alaknanda and Sitara, two sons Chaube and Pande as dancers and another daughter Tara as a musician." Tara Devi was Gopi Krishna's mother and also a famous thumri singer10. Chaube Maharaj can also be seen playing some fierce tabla in Gopi's introductory pillar dance, and he seems to have stayed active in Kathak dance and music through his life. Sitara Devi adopted Chaube's daughters Jayantimala and Priyamala and trained them in her "fiery and energetic" style of Kathak5.
Shobana, the well-known Bharatanatyam dancer and film actress/dancer, was my first film dance love alongside the equally luminous Bhanupriya. Until now I have posted very little about her, the subject of my blog avatar image, because other than her excellent dances in Manichitrathazhu and Dance Like a Man I had not been able to find any other proper film classical dances in her filmography. There were lots of pseudo-classical dances and numbers that tried to evoke classical imagery like those in Rudraveena, Dhwani, and April 18. It seemed hard to believe given how talented of a dancer she was, and I knew there had to be some hardcore practice and stage numbers hiding out there somewhere.
I was so excited when Richard at his Dances on the Footpath blog found Shobana's Bharatanatyam numbers in Mahamayee, and thanks to the huge uptick
recently in the number of Malayalam films and songs posted online I was able to find this week two Malayalam films with classical dances by Shobana that I have never seen before (and I venture to guess neither have most of my readers!). Huge thanks are due to Youtuber Iqnatusm who has uploaded a lot of rare dances from Malayalam cinema [Update: Channel no longer available].
SHO-bana (not "Sho-BANa" as my Malayalee friend corrects me with exasperation) Chandrakumar was born in 1970 (not 1966 as some articles mistakenly claim) in Kerala to the brother of the famous "Travancore Sisters" Lalitha, Padmini, and Ragini. Her first film appearance was at age 9 in Mangalanayiki (Tamil, 1980) but she describes in an interview [no longer available at ibnlive] her true debut film as a lead as April 18 (Malayalam, 1984). But Bhakta Dhruva Markandeya (Telugu, 1982), a children's mythological film starring an all child/teen cast, could be considered her first major role. I was delighted to find the film available on YouTube with English subtitles. Here is a 12-year-old Shobana as Queen Suneethi dancing a bit in a song with just-christened second wife Suruchi (at 13:48 is a brief Bharatanatyam-inspired move). The whole children/young teens acting such mature roles thing is a bit...creepy!
Continuing on from last week's post about Odissi dance in Odia films, here I want to highlight the usage of Odissi in films outside of Odisha. Like other classical dance forms beyond the ubiquitous Kathak and Bharatanatyam, Odissi is rarely seen in non-Odian films. When it does appear in a significant way, it is usually tied to the setting of the film or a character having Odishan heritage. Below are five Indian films that featured Odissi in a significant way starting with my absolute favorite, Hamari Beti.
Hamari Beti (2006, Hindi) - I am thrilled to have discovered this film! In the same spirit as the films Mayuri/Nache Mayuri, Hamari Beti starred Sakti Swarupa Bir (aka Shakti Swaroop) and portrayed her real-life story as a girl in Bhubaneshwar, Odisha, who was deaf and speech impaired but triumphantly rose above her challenges and became an Odissi dancer. National Award-winning Odia film director/cinematographer A.K. Bir directed, scripted, and photographed the film, and Telugu film producer D. Rama Naidu produced it. While the film seems to have only been screened at some film festivals and had a very limited commercial release, luckily for us the production company Suresh Productions has posted the entire film on their YouTube channel! Distributed throughout the film is nearly 15-minutes of Odissi dance, and to my delight nearly all of them are practice dances (my favorite!) done in cotton practice saris. The careful attention to the cinematography and sound design makes the dances a gorgeous watch.
Chittaranjan Acharya (aka Prachee Chitta Ranjan Acharya or C.R. Acharyya), Sakti's real life Odissi guru and inspiration, plays himself in the film and is credited for the film's choreography. Chittaranjan is "an engineer by profession and an Odissi dance exponent by passion" who learned Odissi from Pankaj Charan Das. He still performs Odissi today with his daughterAsmita Mahapatra or his troupe. Here he is in the film demonstrating Odissi for his students—a rare male Odissi film dance!
Start 31:43
In real life, Sakti had developed her speech and hearing disabilities when she was an infant. After seeing a seven-year-old Sakti imitate dancers she saw on the television at home, her father connected her with his work colleague Chittaranjan who found she was a "promising dancer" and agreed to take her as his student. Sakti learned the form by imitating the dance of Chittaranjan's daughter Asmita who was also learning Odissi from him, and when Sakti later performed on stage Chittaranjan would "play" the rhythm with his hands next to the stage. In the film, Asmita's role is played by Odissi dancer Dr. Prachi Mehta who has an expressive and cheerful face.
Now that Uday Shankar’s dance film Kalpana (1948, Hindi) is easily viewable at Pad.ma, Shankar's dance style can be better analyzed and understood. While much has been written and theorized about Shankar’s dance based largely on written and photographic evidence, video is really worth a thousand words and photos! No longer must visual evidence of Shankar's dance be the purview of a tiny sliver of dance scholars (and lucky residents in India!) allowed private screenings while conducting field research. First BritishPathe allowed us glimpses of Shankar's early choreography, and now Kalpana has come to light for the general public to see a wide array of Shankar's works.
After watching Kalpana, I was immediately struck by how varied the dances were: simple folk dance, Kathakali-based creative movement, classical dance, and modern dance based on social themes! I'll be writing more on my overall thoughts of Shankar's dance and legacy as a whole, but in this post I want to focus on the Kathakali-based dances.
I was very surprised at how much Shankar's style was influenced by the postures and movements of dance forms from Kerala, particularly Kathakali. I had read some references to Shankar's connections with Kathakali guru Shankaran Namboodiri and his teaching at Shankar’s dance center, but I didn’t realize the extent to which Shankar's dance style from his middle period was based in the dance form. I also didn’t realize until recently what “pure dance” in Kathakali consisted of given its seeming emphasis on narrative, and I couldn't find any visual teaching resources or books that had something comparable to "adavu" guides for Bharatanatyam.
FINALLY! Whilst leisurely strolling Google tonight for any news on Uday Shankar's 1948 dance filmKalpana, I was ASTONISHED to find that the Pad.ma online video archive folks have UPLOADED THE ENTIRE FILM ONLINE, and it has been up since November! Where have I been? Has no one else noticed this? Am I the last person to know? Is this breaking news? Why isn't this more widely known! Holy hamster fluffles! I had to share this on my blog immediately! Finally! Finally us peons get to see this film! YAY!!!! Patience has finally payed off!
I am so excited I am at a loss for words. I will be posting again later this week after watching and digesting this fantastic piece of Indian cinematic history. :)
Here is the link to the video at Pad.ma (sometimes I've had trouble getting their direct links to load; alternatively you can go to Pad.ma, enter "Kalpana" in the search box, and double click on the film name result). Tips: You have to double click on the video image (or mouse-over it and hit the play button in the lower left-hand corner) to get it to play. The main video is in the center of the screen. On the left side is a smaller version you can mouse over to scroll through screengrabs. On the lower right-hand side of the main video box there is a little gear button; click on it to change the resolution or download it. Note that the downloaded file is a .torrent file, so you have to use a torrent program to fully download the actual video file....which is what I am currently doing! HAPPY VIEWING!
Over a year ago, I featured three rare film dance sequences of members of Madame Menaka's "Menaka Indian Ballet"; twowere from the 1938 German film Der Tiger Von Eschnapur and the other was from the 1938 British documentary Temples of India. Medame Menaka (real name Leila Sokhey) is generally recognized as an instrumental figure in the transformation of the maligned North Indian "nautch" dance to respectable "Kathak" in the 1930s. Not only was she among the first (some would say the first) Brahmin women to perform Kathak on the public stage at a time when public female performance was stigmatized due to its association with prostitution, but also she was a pioneer in refashioning the form with a modern, dance-drama format and introduced Kathak technique to the international community for the first time through her troupe's tours of Europe and Southeast Asia. Unfortunately, Menaka's name and contribution remain generally forgotten today outside of serious dance circles due to her early death in 1947, the demise of her dance school soon after, and the establishment of Kathak as a patriarchal tradition that rarely acknowledges women practitioners of the past "as gurus, teachers, co-creators, or pioneers" (Chakravorty).
Given Menaka's importance to Kathak dance and her billing as a dancer using Kathak technique, I was perplexed when I first watched her troupe's performances in Der Tiger Von Eschnapur. The first dance segment had absolutely nothing to do with Kathak and the second only marginally so; both seemed to be presenting a generic, "exotic" Uday Shankar-style aesthetic that did not follow any particular form of Indian classical dance and instead looked inspired by Javanese dance. At the time I figured Menaka must have bowed to the demands of the film which wanted to feature an "oriental" spectacle.
But this interpretation was turned on its head this week when I got a hold of the late Kathak dancer Damayanti Joshi's biography of Madame Menaka. Joshi explicitly notes the dances in Der Tiger Von Eschnapur were excerpts from two of Menaka's earliest dance-drama creations, Krishna Leela and Deva Vijaya Nritya! What's more, the costumes are clearly authentic pieces straight from the real-life productions, and it's highly likely the music is authentic as well. What conclusions can be drawn from this striking information? I'll get to my thoughts later on in the post, but first I want to review the songs again and reveal who the dancers were.
While browsing the website of the National Portrait Gallery in London, I discovered they have a page on the late famous dancer Ram Gopal who is generally recognized as the first Indian dancer to bring classical/traditional Indian dances (as opposed to Uday Shankar's style) to the West starting in the late 1930s. As I read the NPG's description of Gopal, I couldn't believe my eyes:
"After the War he starred in a number of Hollywood epics made on location, such as The Purple Plain (1954), and William Dieterle's Elephant Walk (1954), for which he had also choreographed the dance sequences.”
What?! Ram Gopal starred in Hollywood films and choreographed a dance? In all my reading about Ram Gopal I had never come across mention of his stint in films! Of course, I had to go on a little research journey and find out as much about this as I could. It appears that he had supporting character rather than starring roles in a few films.
Ram Gopal's Hollywood/British Film Work
Elephant Walk (1954) - This American film contains the only feature film dance associated with Ram Gopal I was able to find. The dance appears to be a traditional Kandyan dance and according to the credits is performed by dancers from the Madhyama Lanka Nritya Mandala, the landmark first traditional Kandyan dance school in Sri Lanka established in the 1940s by traditional Kandyan dancer Suramba Gurunnanse/Rajapakse and still functioning today [website no longer up but archived here]. Kandyan (or “up-country”) dance is one of the three main dance forms
identified with the majority Sinhala ethnic community in Sri Lanka and
is considered Sri Lanka’s national dance.
The film dance was supposedly filmed at the sacred elephant octagonal at the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy. Gopal is credited as the dance's choreographer which I found interesting since I've not read of his learning Kandyan dance in his autobiography or elsewhere. But he did tour Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) in the 1940s and tried to start a "School of Pakistani, Ceylonese, and Indian dances" in the 1960s, so he certainly must have picked up Kandyan dance somewhere along the way. An article in Sri Lanka’s Sunday Times newspaper claimed that the male lead was Ram Gopal himself, but I’m convinced it’s not after taking some screencaps of the lead dancer who definitely does not look like Ram at all. The only person that remotely looks like Ram Gopal is the man with the spear dancing around the masked elephant at the end.
Definitely not Ram Gopal
The film dance begins with a procession of dancers walking to the performance space and then cuts to a group of male dancers wearing what looks like authentic Ves costumes. The lead performer, pictured above, gives an incredibly energetic performance! The sequence is frequently interrupted by the irritating dialogue of the luminous
Elizabeth Taylor and her companions. At 2:34, the female dancers
appear and another solo dancer gives yet another energized but brief performance. It's interesting that the women are not wearing the female Kandyan dance costume seen today. The number quickly goes downhill when white chick Mylee Haulani saunters in to titillate
the male onlookers but is revived when the masked elephant dancer appears at 5:15. The feel of the whole sequence is one of the
"sophisticated" westerners
watching a "quaint" but strange "oriental" dance performance of the
country
they are in. I wonder if any of the dancers in the scene were
well-known Kandyan dancers in the 1950s? Definitely an excellent archival piece of Kandyan dance history. Here tis:
(2021 Update: I am no longer updating this blog but hope you enjoy my older posts!) Bringing light to classical and traditional Indian dances in the cinema of India; unearthing rare archival clips and academic research on South Asian dance!
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