A New Voice

The pada varnam, which has come to be the centrepiece of the traditional Bharatanatyam repertoire, hinges on the Nayika. Contrary to the grand variety of situations in padams/javalis, the emancipated voices and the agency of the women we see in them, the Nayika of the pada varnam seems to be of a single kind. Every traditional varnam recurrently, and almost insistently, features a woman pining in love. She seems fragile, languishing in the ache of unsatiated love. From Saami Ninne Korinanu (18th century) to Innum en Manam (20th Century), the rhetoric is clear. “I seek you. Will you not pay heed? I suffer from the torment of separation. When will you come to me?” Surely, this persistent choice is telling us something.

There is a subtle, yet pervasive, treatment of gender fluid themes in the entire breadth of ancient Indian literature. The idea of ‘maleness’ and ‘femaleness’ is constantly challenged, without much ado, with negotiable boundaries of sexual and gender identities. This lecture-demonstration will look at how such multifold nuances of gender can be kept alive and relevant through the centuries by a performative medium such as Bharatanatyam.

I understand spirituality through Art, rather than the other way round. By redefining spirituality as a non-intellectual embodied experience of reality, I can comprehend the ‘exhilaration’ that I feel and in a way harvest it to further intensify the experience. Uniquely, art facilitates a transference of this experience to someone who walks into the auditorium with zero preparation, zero background or zero intent – which I think is extremely powerful. In this sense I feel, dance, its practice and its consumption, in themselves, become a gateway to spiritual experience regardless of faith, personal beliefs or content of presentation.