No Kali, no Durga, no Shiva dancing Ananda Tandav and no bhakt hailing their powers; no story told, no narrative sung, only pure feminine energy in the center of a dark space. As the dance progresses towards a union of feminine and masculine energy, in its most abstract form, the two bodies unravel their energies, singularly and in unison.
Are these two bodies performing only a sequence of yoga postures, in tandem? Or is there a narrative to be deciphered? How does a viewer trained in decoding the gestures and un-layering each minuscule movement of classical Indian dance form supposed to perceive the stillness and the minimalism?
These are some of the thoughts I can recollect while I witnessed Chandralekha’s Sharira over a decade ago at Delhi's Kamani auditorium. As the Gundecha brothers intoned the many roop of the primal Goddess , “Jagat Janani Maa Jwalamukhi..”, I remember watching those movements and being engulfed into the stillness (stabdha). I remember being immersed into a dark abyss. I remember not wanting to move from my seat even after the performance had concluded.
This post is not about remembering Chandralekha, and not even about Sharira, her last choreographic work. This post is a provocation to ruminate on a choreographer’s process.
As I watch her many interviews, and documentation of her works, today, all her work seems like a journey, a process towards Sharira. Her choreographic work used to take years in the making, extracting the juice from a narrative and choreographing it in its pure abstract form.
At one point, Tishani Doshi, the dancer who has been performing Sharira, with Shaji John, for 16 years caresses her foot, and makes me wonder if it is representing a child or a mirror. But why does it have to be either? It is a part of her body and that is what she does.. caresses her own body. The rasika does not need to unfold any layers rof meanings, but only needs to be consumed into the primal emotion created on the stage .
The learnings of the body, the many experience that the body imbibes consciously and sub-consciously, the body exists in its sensual, sexual and spiritual self, beyond boundaries. It is that self which is performed in Sharira. But where is that self to be found?
In one of her workshops, Chandralekha gives a peek into her process, she says “I would never be able to live without indignation, indignation is against everything that you cannot accept, and that is very much there. It is internalized by the body, and that is what I tell my dancers "internalization" is the keyword, internalize the protest, internalize the anger, it must come in your eyes, it must come in your bodies, it must come in your spine. For me life without indignation would be impossible, you see so much which is wrong and you look at it and it is not possible not to be touched by it, you are brutalized by it. That is why it is important for us to stand for change rather than keep things as they are even if we are comfortable and it does not affect us.”
{Chandralekha, Workshop New Directions in Indian Dance, 1992}
{Picture sourced from pulseconnects.com}
Aastha Gandhi
( India )