Like most artistes, Bharatanatyam dancer Savitha Sastry believes she is different. Speaking about her new production, Soul Cages, Sastry, 42, says: “Unlike most Bharatanatyam performances, mine will have no romance and no yearning for Krishna or any other god, and trust me, you won’t miss anything.” Soul Cages will have its inaugural show in Delhi on 28 January, and will also travel to Mumbai, Bangalore and Kolkata.
Storyteller: Savitha Sastry.
The classical dance of Tamil Nadu, Bharatanatyam, used to be presented by
devdasis, the temple courtesans, who seamlessly entwined spirituality with the erotic. In the 19th century, when morality acquired new meanings, the fall in the status of these women led to the dance’s decline. Revived in the 1930s, Bharatanatyam shifted its venue from temples to concert halls; the merchant class
devdasis left the stage for upper-class Brahmin women. “Love, sex and debauchery went out,” says Sastry. “Bharatanatyam was de-sexed.”
Sastry says that while debauchery could figure in her future shows, “for too long, Bharatnatyam has been used to tell only particular kinds of stories, which are about pining for Shiva, or accusing the beloved Krishna of hobnobbing with other women, or killing demons, and that whole thing of good winning over evil. You are not telling even those stories honestly by having to cloak them under a cover of spirituality.”
This is rebellious talk coming from a person raised in Chennai’s Mylapore, a conservative neighbourhood that Sastry calls “the citadel of the Tam-Bram (Tamil-Brahmin) world, where mornings begin with the wake-up call of Carnatic singer M.S. Subbulakshmi’s Suprabhatham, devotional songs dedicated to lord Venkateswara of Tirupati”.
Soul Cages opens with death, a taboo theme in Bharatanatyam, which, according to Sastry, characteristically ties the viewer to eternal auspiciousness. “We don’t know what lies on the other side of life. In my story, a six-year-old girl dies, make a transition to the afterlife and still remembers her time on earth.”
A graduate with a master’s in neurosciences from the University of South Florida, US, Sastry claims her narration is designed for those who have no clue about Bharatanatyam. “Here, the dance movements are tightly connected with lyrics. But in my performance, the story is what the audience will go back with, without even consciously realizing that it was conveyed to them through the medium of Bharatanatyam. The audience will not perceive this art form as an alien concept to their experiences and backgrounds.”
Is this Bharatanatyam for dummies? What about those who care deeply about its classical elements?
“At no point, am I dumbing it down. I’m not compromising on its technical aspects. I’m respectful to its precisions, fluidity and grace,” says Sastry, who has performed in more than a dozen countries, including the US, England, Ireland, Switzerland and Australia. “Don’t misunderstand me. I’m convinced in Bharatanatyam. I’m not straying from the way it is delivered. I’ve spent many years trying to get technically competent. Now I’m trying to rise above that accomplishment by using it as a means to tell a story, not as an end in itself.”
To escape from Chennai, where Sastry believes “Bharatanatyam is deeply entrenched in sanctimoniousness” and where she feared her work might be viewed unfavourably, Sastry moved to Delhi a year ago.
Soul Cages is a 54-minute solo recital, and will be performed to recorded music—an ensemble of violins, viola, tabla and percussion composed by Rajkumar Bharathi, great-grandson of poet Subramanya Bharathi.
Sastry’s theme may be new, but her act will not stray from Bharatanatyam’s characteristic angular movements of limbs, complete with triangles and diagonals. “Expect an evening of entertainment,” she says.
Soul Cages will open in Delhi on 28 January at Kamani Auditorium. It will play at Bangalore’s Chowdiah Memorial Hall on 11 February; the Gyan Manch auditorium in Kolkata on 18 February; and the National Centre for the Performing Arts’ Dance Theatre Godrej in Mumbai on 10 March.‘
mayank.s@livemint.com