Dr. Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren [KK] spoke with Padmashri Darshana Jhaveri [DJ] on the eve of her perfomance in Ragamala's Utsav 2007 Festival. This interview took place over two days during Jhaveri’s residency at the University of Washington, Bothell on Oct 8 and 9, 2007. The conversation focuses on Jhaveri’s thoughts about Manipuri dance, on how it developed in India as a classical and nationally known dance form, as well as, how the form has traveled and been received over several decades of touring.

 

KK: How did you actually get started with Manipuri dance? What’s that moment when you thought, “Yes, that is what I’m going to do.”

DJ: The 40's and 50's were an age of revivalism in India. Under Gandhiji's leadership, we were fighting for our independence (from the British). He inspired the younger generation to revive our ancient culture. Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore, the poet laureate, also helped put our native art forms on a higher pedestal. Before the 40's, it was not considered acceptable for girls from good families to take up dance as a career or to even come on the stage and dance! But Tagore changed that thinking.

(Manipuri) Guru Vipin Singh came to Bombay in 1943, and worked with my two elder sisters, Naina and Ranjana, on a dance drama. Up until that point, all four of us sisters had been dancing together; as the young generation of the day, we were doing dance dramas, taking different stories and utilizing different dance forms...on an amateur level...and performing them onstage. That’s where we started. But then, we felt that Manipuri dance was so graceful, lyrical, devotional...and it seemed to suit our natural aptitude more. Guruji's scholarly attitude and way of teaching created an interest in us. His creativity made us stick to this particular dance style. Also, my father had a broad mind, liberal views and farsightedness. It is not very common in Gujarati families, in our community, to take up dance or music as a career. There was opposition from my Uncle's family. Nevertheless, because of my father’s insistence and deep interest, we got the opportunity to learn dance. So, first our parents and our teacher, and later the husbands of my two sisters encouraged us. Our school principal also gave us the opportunity to meet big musicians and dancers that used to come to our school. They would come to our house also. So that way, we grew up in that atmosphere. We were very fortunate to get all that exposure to the arts at a young age.

KK: That sounds very amazing. A generative time...

DJ: Yes. We decided that Manipuri was the right style to delve into deeply and master. So, in the 50's, along with Guruji, we went to Manipur; he was particular that we must imbibe the spirit of Manipur so we know the dance and music as it is interwoven in the fabric of life in Manipur. All social and religious occasions throughout the year included dance and music. So he thought that we must visit Manipur, stay there and study from different gurus and imbibe their styles of dance. The Raasleela dance drama and Sankirtan with the Pung-cholum dance (with the drum and cymbals) are classical forms. So, we studied, did more work and went into these two forms only. In Manipur, they have other traditional forms, folk dances, tribal dances and martial arts that we didn’t learn. We did learn the very traditional dance of the Priestess because it was an ancient form of dance going back some two thousand years. The Priestesses described the primitive concept of cosmology through dance; we learned it just to understand the origin of Manipuri.

KK: So, when you say you focused on those forms, does that also mean that you spent certain amounts of time in Manipur?

DJ: Yes, 1958 onwards, I used to go to Manipur practically every year and stay four to six months with our Guruji. I learned the different dance forms--the cymbal dance, the drum dance and the Raasleela dances--from other gurus also. There are many gurus who are specialized in each aspect of these dance forms. I even learnt Pung-cholum, the dance with the drum, in order to acquire some knowledge about it. It is very strenuous and generally not advisable (for women), but for the sake of knowledge, I learned to dance while playing on the drum.

 

Our guruji was also very particular that we must collect and document the oral tradition. Three hundred years ago (in Manipur), they adopted Gaudiya Vaishnavism, a devotional cult of Hinduism as advocated by Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. At that time, the dance dramas of Raasleela and Sankirtan were developed into classical dance forms. These two forms were inspired by the Vaishnavite texts on dance and music which came along with the religion from Bengal.

The gurus made these forms very stylized and classical, very rich in dance movements, time measures and rhythm patterns. But a hundred years ago, this learning of the shastras (the texts) was not there. The texts were in Sanskrit and the gurus were not educated enough to read them. So, all these technical shastras came down as oral tradition. For some fifty-sixty years, it had been coming down as an oral tradition, passed on from teacher to student in the Gurukul system. When we came into the picture, we thought that we must collect and record the knowledge of the oral tradition by writing it down and by recording on tapes. So we recorded all this information from the various gurus that specialized in different forms of dance and music. Then we studied all the texts and manuscripts that were available in Manipur. Before, the gurus could not read. So, they would either worship the manuscripts or throw them in the river (laughs)! We collected manuscripts from different houses, studied the manuscripts and texts on dance and music, and then correlated them with the oral tradition we had recorded and written down from the gurus. 

 

KK: So, in your process of collecting and mapping out the original text to the oral tradition, have you also gone through a process of feeding that back to the local gurus and if so, how has that impacted them?

DJ: When we established the scientific tenets (of Manipuri), we choreographed and composed each element for the theater. This has been a very important contribution (to classical Manipuri dance form) in the last forty-fifity years. The dances in the temples go on for eight to ten hours! We cannot do the same dances in the theater. In two hours, we have to present all the variety, all the elements, classical elements like time measures, the three main divisions of dance--pure dance, story form and interpretive dance--as well as dances on the different taals (rhythm cycles). We used to select sequences from the Raasleela and condense them in such a way as to bring out its beauty in ten minutes.

 

You ask a good question...whether our work was accepted there. In the beginning, when I would go and perform in Manipur in a seminar or conference, they would criticize us and say that we are commercializing it."...it (Manipuri dance) is so sacred, it is done in the temples, in front of God we are doing, and you are doing in the theater" they would say. Our audiences are not necessarily devotional, they are not devotees of Krishna; they come for entertainment. We explained to them how we were making it more beautiful and more accessible to the outside audience. Gradually they accepted.

KK: Did it have an impact on the art form in Manipur?

DJ: Yes, after twenty-thirty years, now the local academy has started conducting a solo dance festival and provoking different gurus to compose like this.

KK: How did people respond?

DJ: Now they are comparing our compositions with theirs and saying how beautiful our work is. It has been a great challenge and a great struggle for us. It was a pioneering work, the kind that was done in Bharatanatyam a long time ago and in many other dance forms in the last fifity years. Bharatanatyam gurus are very learned and more exposed to the outer world; so, the dance form developed and made the transition from temple to theater very quickly. What Rukmini Devi of Kalakshetra did to Bharatanatyam and Guru Kelucharan Mahapatra did to Odissi, we the Jhaveri sisters and Guru Vipin Singh did to Manipuri. We made Manipuri a sophisticated art form for the theater. It was necessary to bring Manipuri from the temple to the theater. In Manipur, it is so much a part of their social and religious life. If a child is born, a ceremony is perfomed with dance and music, with Pung-cholum and cymbal dance Sankirtan. There is a different dance for each occasion. It is so much a part of their life that they are not concerned with whether it is classical or folk, whether it is popular or not, whether it is liked by other people or not. But we were from Bombay, we were educated...so, we looked at it purely as an art form. Our whole attitude and intention was different. The theater is temple to us. It is a similar sense of dedication and devotion we feel when we perform. In Manipur, when they watch (dance) they are in ecstasy and feel a deep love for Krishna. In this modern age this (theater performance) is also necessary.

 

Anasuya Devi as Krishna (L) and Pankhuri Agrawal as Radha (R). Photo courtesy Partho Ghosh	Tomba Singh in the Pung-cholum drum dance

KK: In watching the performance, I got the devotional quality, the intense lyricism. I can imagine the audiences crying. To stay in the historical frame, in terms of your own work – traveling back and forth, how has your task stayed the same over the years in researching Manipuri dance, archiving it and bringing it to the larger public? How has it stayed the same and how has it changed over time?

DJ: We think of ourselves as classical dancers of a traditional art form. The creative work to bring the dances from temple to theater has taken all these years. But now, the young dancers want to go ahead and create their own themes. They want to take different themes, take inspiration from Manipuri forms, folk dances...modern themes...themes other than Krishna-Radha. I believe that if you take contemporary themes, then the form has to change. If the content is different, then the movements have to be changed. We feel that Manipuri classical dance style is very rich, but it won’t suit modern themes. It suits historical or mythological themes that have higher values. If you take modern themes like drinking, then you have to change the style. You cannot express it. I will not do this (laughs). I am more of a traditionalist.

KK: We were talking yesterday about the overall arc of your work. I want to take a few minutes today to find out about the touring part of your work. What it’s been like to tour in India and internationally, and how it’s changed over time.

DJ: In 1958, we four sisters were the first non-Manipuris to dedicate our dancing in the Govindajee palace temple in Manipur. It was such a good beginning that we began dancing in temples in the other villages in Kachar district. Dancing in temples gave us much joy and spiritual experience. Then we started traveling in India and abroad...Japan in 1961, then Ceylon (Srilanka) etc. In 1963, we did a  wonderful tour across West Germany--Stuttgart, Munich, Berlin and other places-- and did thirty programs in one month! The audiences were very appreciative. I used to come to the classical dance festivals in London and the African countries. Audiences in Russia and Africa liked the drumming. The boys dancing with the drum, the masculine aspect of our dance, was more appreciated. In Paris, Germany, London, New York, they have a highly developed aesthetic sense; they could enjoy the beauty of the form and experience the joy of the feminine aspect of Manipuri dance. In Japan, Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia, there is a cultural affinity. Manipuri people are considered to be from Mongol stock; so, their aesthetic sensibility is in tune with the Japanese (dance form). Their (Japanese) movements are more restrained and poised. There is balance and control in the movements. Even the expressions are natural, there is a full language of gestures, movements of the face, eyes, lips and eyebrows to express different characters. It is highly developed. Very nice. In Manipuri, the gestures are suggested. 

KK: Would you say that over all of that time of touring that there has been a change in the audience or not very specific?

DJ: No, not a very specific change.

KK: A general question related to Manipuri dance education and research…

DJ: We have established three academies in Bombay,Calcutta, and Manipur to channel teaching activities, research and publication. We have published about seventeen books, manuscripts and tapes. We have also devised a systematic course of Manipuri dance for future generations. The Ford Foundation has also given us a grant to work on four major research projects.

KK: There is not a substitute for training in the form and understanding the dance from the inside… I want to talk about the aesthetics for a minute. There is a sense of something particular coming through….the movement is curvilinear...there is a feeling of always moving…

DJ: Yes, a sort of trance, lot of circular movements...they call it Jattikoi in Manipuri language..that turning of the body. The choreographic plan is round. Everything is round, round. The movements are spiral. That signifies the concept of Mandala. It is very spiritual; it responds to the universe. The planets circling around the Sun, for instance. The Gopis dance in a circle around Krishna-Radha. The theme extends from the mundane to the spiritual.