Film Dances/Appearances of Ram Gopal and Extant Dance Footage

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:

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9 comments Male Dance, Ram Gopal, Rare Find, Rare Real-Life Footage, Research

Rare Video Clips of Devadasis, Uday Shankar & Simkie, Ram Gopal, and More

What a stunning find!  The wonderful commenter Gaddeswarup recently sent me a video from the site BritishPathé.com, and I'm grateful he did because when I explored the site further I found it houses some priceless footage of Indian dance.

British Pathé, a former film and newsreel company that "documented almost every aspect of everyday life in Britain and around the world in the 20th century" (BBC), has digitised its extensive archive ("90,000 videos from 1897-1970") online with free and full-length viewing for any visitor.  Given that Britain ruled the Indian subcontinent until 1947, the archive has a substantial number of clips of Indian events and every day life from the first half of the 20th century: independence, visits from British royalty, disorder and protests, ceremonies and weddings, festivals, politicians, dances, and much more.  Much of the older footage has a strong Orientalist tone; pictured on the left is a nice dance-related example from Indian Peeps (1930).

All of the videos can be purchased and downloaded, but since the listed duration of the videos for purchase are the same as their previews, I don't see any incentive to purchase them at exorbitant prices (30 Euros for a one-minute clip!).  What's most entertaining about the site is the descriptions; the catalogers given the job of dutifully describing each scene in every video must have gotten tired at some point because some of their phrasings are hilarious!  But I'm glad they went to that trouble because it allows the video events to be text searchable.

Unfortunately, none of the videos can be embedded, so you'll have to click on the lovely preview images to link to the video. Update: Now that BritishPathe transferred all its videos to YouTube, I've embedded them all below. Enjoy!

Devadasi Footage from the 1930s

The most important find has been a silent clip titled "Maharanee of Baroda" circa 1930-1935.  Starting at 8:06, two devadasi dancers perform in front of their musical ensemble.  The footage is stunning - the dancers are dressed exactly like those in old archival photos from this time period and before; it's as if the old photos have come to life!  They begin by dancing what looks like the alarippu portion of a Sadir/present-day Bharatanatyam performance, then move onto a more free-flowing, folksy dance style, and then return to Sadir/Bharatanatyam around 11:30.  The musicians and their instruments are fascinating; I've read accounts of how bagpipes used to be part of Sadir performances before the dance form was recreated as Bharatanatyam- I wonder if the musician on the right is an example of what is meant by "bagpipe."  Last, we must of course remember that this was a staged performance for the camera, but its historical value is immense.

Dancers appear 8:07

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18 comments Bulbul Chowdhury, Devadasis, Male Dance, Ram Gopal, Rare Real-Life Footage, Simkie, Uday Shankar