This piece was originally written for and published here by The Dance Center at Columbia College’s “On the Ground” writers series.
To watch my guru Hema Rajagopalan perform like she did at the Dance Center last weekend was a rare portal into a dream world where those heroes who have molded you become larger than life in their fullest embodiment of a knowledge they have so generously shared for decades. I was moved, and left the auditorium with a deeply felt sense of connection to my artistic lineage.
I began my training with Hema Aunty - as her many disciples affectionately call her - in the early 1990’s. Throughout the passing of countless weekly classes, summer camps, private lessons, and company rehearsals, I have pleaded many times with her to perform. As a student, there is an earnest longing to behold what I believe are the magic powers our teachers possess. I desire to know more intimately where I come from and what is shaping me. I yearn to witness my masters immersively lost in their craft. Yet, Rajagopalan had long ago stepped away from the role of a performing artist to focus on being a teacher and director of her school and company. With the exception of one production in 2015, which I could not attend, she has not performed in decades.
Momentously, as a part of the Dance Center at Columbia College’s presenting series, Rajagopalan took on a central role in Natya Dance Theatre’s new work called Inai - The Connection, on November 7-9, 2019. At last, I could sit closely with my eyes glued, observing her commanding presence executing on all the details she pored over while coaching hundreds of students over the past 45 years. This show was promoted primarily as a collaboration between Chicago’s Rajagopalan and Mumbai’s Astad Deboo, a well-established figure in contemporary dance circuits of India, with kathak, kathakali, and other global influences present in his idiosyncratic movement. Perhaps because of my childlike absorption with my own teacher or because of Natya’s choreographic approach to collaboration as juxtaposition more than integration, I felt that Deboo’s presence within the project was peripheral, somewhat tacked-on, but also a supportive accompaniment and an ornamental backdrop to Rajagopalan’s adept passages on stage.
As she paused in the spotlight, I often noticed the instinctive and subconscious tapping of Rajagopalan’s toes, the twitching of her ankle, the pulsing involvement of her aged bones and matured veins. These signs of an internalized reveling in the syncopated rhythms and melodic lilts of a phenomenal live orchestra - consisting of four maestros for whom I wish I had another 1000-word allotment to reflect on their highly evocative and fiery musicality so core to the production - brought me great satisfaction. And so did Rajagopalan’s impassioned abhinaya and fastidious nritta technique, her nuanced and beautifully punctuated emotions, her gliding gaits, her obvious comfort throughout. She is an illustrious performer, needing no instrumentation to affirm the might of her dance, which was exposed in one sequence when she sculpted emphatic geometries against the bare syllabic jathi recited by mridangist G. Vijayaraghavan a cappella.
I was stunned to see just how much material she took on, when she could have easily written herself a smaller role. It was more than I anticipated, a feast when I was expecting a modest meal. I savored every moment.
Clearly, Rajagopalan has become no stranger to performing, despite having removed herself from the center of audience attention all these years. She has evidently been engrossed in dancing as an active participant in every minute of every move her students have attempted. What I mean is something more than a sort of figurative involvement, but rather, I’m talking about an actual, physiological experience that runs through our bodies’ cellular memories when we watch dance. Sometimes called kinesthetic empathy, it is the idea that our bodies, even if seemingly still, are viscerally experiencing any human movement that we witness. Through constant observation of students over her extensive career, she has never been far away from performing herself.
Throughout the work, six dancers and two puppets traversed about the whole stage in lovely sequences of carefully composed choreography, but I somehow felt unsure about their role in the project. Again, admitting my guru-fandom particular to this viewing, the ensemble felt like gleeful backup dancers for stars Rajagopalan and Deboo. They indeed contributed a dynamic and dramatic volume to the evening, which offered viewers a luxurious spectacle of intertwining coordination and smooth articulations that were pleasurable but still mostly empty for me. This part of the show felt like filler, and I didn’t sense any clear motivation for why they had to be there.
This is where I get a little stuck.
Bharatanatyam has traditionally been a practice meant for a soloist. Just as I did, most students of bharatanatyam in this reconstructionist era primarily learn how to deliver dances alone. People flock to well-known figureheads in the field eager to see their solo margams. Temples, historically the main setting for bharatanatyam, can spare a few square feet for only one dancer to perform at a time. Despite my participation in and creation of numerous multi-body choreographies, I observe my own lackluster reaction to this aspect of Natya’s show as an indicator that I have become partial to watching one artist, a singular and consistent force, take me on a deep and intimate journey. Ensemble work often has the allure of excitement and more possibilities but can also overlook or undermine the depth and complexity one person brings, and so I wonder how Rajagopalan navigates these choices. Is it possible that we, the many Indian dance practitioners in the diaspora, may be bending to an indirect pressure to broaden bharatanatyam’s appeal and fit into popular venues? Or are we consciously and independently making these choices? What could the show have been like if it was only Rajagopalan and Deboo, or dare I imagine, just Rajagopalan? Would it be unthinkable to watch a solo bharatanatyam-inspired work in a Michigan Avenue theater?
For rasikas, or frequent bharatanatyam-goers, the inclusion of classic literature commonly used in Indian dance, such as centuries-old lyrics by the revered Kshetrayya or Gopala Krishna Bharathi, lent a formulaic structure to Inai that was both predictable as well as nostalgic. I love seeing these familiar expressional pieces rendered, but I also wonder, why plug them into a new performance work that calls itself something else? Something here felt like an easy fix, a creative shortcut, a superficial choice, or a forced inclusion; I’m not sure which one. Inai takes on the theme of bridging, healing, and overcoming differences, barriers, and egos. Yet, it often approaches this in a trite and reductive way, offering up blunt depictions of discord and simplistic, uncompelling portrayals of resolution. Given all that we are living through in this intensely charged and heavily fraught political moment, when we are burdened with processing every imaginable type of conflict as a society, I wished there was a more sincere grappling for me to lean into. While the Hindu philosophy embedded in shringara padams and devotional kritis genuinely purports an expansive and inclusive conception of identity, it feels immiscible to combine a religious and political message together without more thought and effort.
Rajagopalan’s work, across her almost 70-years-long lifespan, reads as a love letter to a tradition she feels forever loyal to and completely convinced by. And yet, in it, I also perceive her aspiration to be relevant in mainstream spaces. In spite of all her accolades and incredible successes, I wonder if there remains an internal tug-of-war. Her ongoing mission is to get people to appreciate the form of bharatanatyam and its original intent, while “still trying to communicate something” to uninitiated audiences, which she told me in a casual chat before teaching a workshop to Columbia College students the Wednesday prior to Inai’s premiere. The tone of her remark seemed a bit hopeful, a bit skeptical, a bit surrendered to whatever the outcome might be of what she seemed to admit was a persistent challenge.
During the Thursday post-show talkback, the artists were discussing several choices and opportunities that came up in their collaboration. “I was very scared,” Rajagopalan endearingly confessed a couple times. Deboo laughingly confirmed saying that “Hema wanted to be safe and secure and for me to take all the risks!” This felt telling and aligned with my observations. So then, what motivates her to pursue these collaborations? Of all the things she continues to stay busy with, I wonder where her heart is and what gives her the most satisfaction these days.
What struck me again and again, during the workshop she led, during her performances and talkback, and during the post-show personal greeting of her many students, enthusiasts, and well-wishers who flooded the stage, is that she is still showing up, at this age, and it means so much to so many people. As evidenced through the artistic life of Rajagopalan, a gracefully evolving, maturing, aging, and forever-exploring body, mind, and spirit remains consequential in the field of dance well after youthful agility has faded. I love this. I love the intergenerational import. When our elders dance, especially those who have artistically raised us, it is inspiring to see them still engaging, working to figure things out through their art.
I saw the show twice, and on both evenings the crowd was filled with Natya alumni. Perhaps for many of them, and certainly for me, there was an undeniable recognition that our roots go deep and an impression that our journeys ahead will likely be long. The river Ganga whose vitality cascades down from the mountaintops eventually flowing into countless smaller streams is commonly invoked as a metaphor for the knowledge that passes down to us through our gurus across generations. Through Rajagopalan’s performance in Inai, I could experience the resounding flow.