revival and reinvention in india's Kathak dance - University of Toronto

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172 MUSICultures 37interested in seeing whether I can bridge these bodies of knowledge, identifycommon ground and discrepancies, and begin to move toward a model of“revival” as a global phenomenon.All of India’s so-called “classical” performing arts went through somesort of revival or reinvention in the twentieth century. Through two centuriesof social and political flux, music and dance had already adjusted to a seriesof shifts in patronage as the feudal contexts of the Mughal Imperial court inNorth India and regional royal courts in South India were gradually underminedand annexed by emergent British colonial rule. During the nineteenthcentury, venues for performance became even more varied. Private houseparties given by both elite Indians and “Indianized” Britons almost always includedentertainment by professional musicians and dancers, and the formalstate-sponsored “Darbars,” which reinforced princely and eventually BritishImperial power, provided extravagant displays including music and dance performanceas well as lavish parades of elephants, soldiers, and marching bands.During the same years, private establishments, presided over by the hereditarywomen performers we now call courtesans, presented more intimate genresincluding poetry recitation and songs illustrated with evocative gestures anddances. Yet, the performing arts’ association with Imperialism (both Mughaland British), the effete and decadent courts, and especially the courtesansand thus the sex trade made them problematic to the evolving Independencemovement. A key feature of the nationalist sentiment that accompanied themovement was the intentional repossession of an exclusively Indian culture asa source of national pride; music, dance, architecture, and literature needed tobe celebrated as the rich inheritance of a people worthy of equality, autonomy,and self-government. The revival of Indian music and dance thus involved notonly a further shift in patronage as urban institutions and middle class artistsreplaced both courts and courtesans, but also a reclamation and attendantgentrification of performing arts that distanced them from their seeminglydissolute recent past, allowing them to become quintessential symbols of thenew and ancient nation.The story of reclamation and revival in Indian music and dance is thestory of all the genres that today are identified as “classical.” Indeed, it wasarguably the process of urbanization and institutionalization that created thepresent canon of Indian art music and dance. Hindustani Sangit, the classicalmusic of North India, Karnataka Sangeeta, the classical music of SouthIndia, and each of the six or so classical dances, manipuri, kathakali, bharatanatyam,kathak, kuchipudi or odissi, were all to some extent reinvented in the halfcentury straddling Independence in 1947. Any one of these would serve as aworthwhile case study for this examination of revival, and excellent work is
Walker: Revival and Reinvention in India’s Kathak Dance173ongoing particularly in bharatanatyam (Meduri 2008; O’Shea 2007) and odissi(Lopez y Royo 2007). Kathak, the classical dance of North India and my particularfield of expertise, however, not only provides a useful and illustrativeexample of how performing arts and particularly dance were affected by therevival, but also offers some uniquely non-Western perspectives on questionsof authenticity, hybridity, and cultural change.Placing Kathak Dance in the Indian RevivalKathak today is a virtuosic stage dance performed by trained artists as a professionalproduction for an audience. Characteristic kathak dance vocabulary includesrhythmic footwork,which is often improvisedand enhanced by ankle bellscalled ghunguru, and dizzyingsequences of spins calledchakkars. This energetic sideis contrasted by flowing,sensual gestures used predominantlyin expressive ornarrative dances and containedfor the most part inthe arms, hands, and upperbody. Kathak dancers’ gesturesand facial expressionsare subtle and contrast withthe more exaggerated, theatricalmovements of otherIndian dances. In what isconsidered its most traditionalform, this distinctivevocabulary (energeticand sensual) finds expressionthrough a performancepractice consisting of aFigure 1: Pandit Birju Maharaj, hereditary Kathak dancerand current authority of kathak dance (specifically thestyle from the city of Lucknow). Source - The Times of IndiaGroup © BCCL. Used with permission.solo presentation of a seriesof short dance piecesthat unfold over a graduallyincreasing tempo. The
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