Rajata Sringa Vaibhava – hosted by Silambam Phoenix
A discussion elicited by Bandhavam – seen on April 4, 2025
While there are many talented – and certain, dare I say, revered, practitioners of Bharatanatyam who have been performing and teaching in the area for decades, Silambam Phoenix distinguishes itself as an organization – one that has several counterparts across the country, and uniquely dedicates itself, not just to dance instruction, but to charitable community outreach. I don’t need to tell you how rare it is for a non-profit arts organization, which are typically cash-strapped, to still manage somehow to donate meaningful amounts to local causes. And while I would rate their social profile very high, they have proven to be artistically and creatively significant as well.
Their director, Srimanthy Mohan, is in a direct line of succession to the founders and subsequent gurus of her particular form, a lineage that can be traced back to the 17th century. But while she is committed to retaining the authenticity of the form, my interest has been piqued by her efforts to enlarge and adapt it to contemporary Western themes. Silambam’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing”, recently performed in collaboration with Convergence Ballet, was a rather stunning example of the adaptability of this tradition and its ability to reach an uninitiated Western audience. A review of that performance is on Viewed Re/Viewed.
Silambam Phoenix recently hosted Rajata Sringa Vaibhava, a three-day celebration which included other Silambam organizations and students from around the country, as well as some international attendees. I was only able to attend the first day – a presentation of Bandhavam, an original, collaborative work by the four dancers who performed it.
This was a rare opportunity to see, in one performance, four advanced practitioners of the art of Bharatanatyam who had studied under the same teacher, with a direct line to a prominent guru. The reasonable assumption was that if I ever encountered a performance better than these, given my limited perception I would not be able to discern the difference, which would certainly be minute. For me, this was as close as I was going to get to observe mastery in this form.
The fact that there were four performers was itself unique in that I am most familiar with solo performances. It also complicated the situation as the performers frequently represented different characters interacting with each other, putting in question who was interacting with whom and why.
This was an ambitious, muti-faceted work addressing a wide range of the human condition. However, it included a backdrop used to project an introductory video before each of the segments. The videos were highly produced, presenting slice-of-life and natural environments as background for an explanatory narrative relevant to the next section. The narratives were broadly philosophical in nature, addressing themes such as kinship and family bonds, nature and nurturing, youthful exploration and growth, courtship, maturation and adulthood – in essence, the arc of human experience.
Here, reading the room was relevant. Looking around, I saw a predominantly mature, South Asian audience. For the assembled, this was obviously not their first rodeo. They came to see Bharatanatyam, and the videos, probably not in their first language, were more nicety than necessity. I’m sure they were still very functional. Because this was original work, the videos provided a frame of reference within which they could surmise sufficient detail.
My response was mixed. Some things were fairly obvious – a mother cradling her baby. Others were an educated guess – that’s probably a mother and those are her obstreperous children. Much of it was seriously opaque. I needed more granularity, more definition – but I realize that, in this context, that level of explanation may have dumbed down the presentation to the point of being insulting to this more sophisticated, more culturally attuned, audience. My needs aside, Silambam Phoenix probably got this exactly right. Again, read the room.
Despite the authenticity and appropriateness of this performance, I came out of it with a growing conviction that Bharatanatyam, at least in the context of the local dance scene, needs to evolve. This is not a revue of that performance, per se, but a reaction to it – a suggestion – perhaps even a plea, to practitioners that are performing locally. With increased exposure to Bharatanatyam, I have gradually acquired some small insights into the form – bits and pieces that do not add up to a whole. But if I am no longer completely blank, I am still acutely aware of how foreign this movement language is to the uninitiated.
Bharatanatyam is, at its core, a storytelling form. So much of the movement is highly stylized. Foot-slapping, leaps, gorgeous costumes, bells – these are all about style. But the hand gestures, head and eye movement, facial expressions – these are not simple aesthetics, they are a language, a method of communication with the audience. Traditionally, these are classic Hindi religious and folk tales which you would understand if you were steeped in the culture and recognized the basic framing. I suppose the Western equivalent would be something simple and iconic like David and Goliath or George Washington and the cherry tree.
Without the benefit of any direct personal knowledge, I suspect that these motifs, which were once commonly understood in the traditional culture, are now fading for contemporary South Asian audiences. And I can confirm, with some certainty, that understanding them at the level of story is essentially non-existent for Westerners. To venture even more pure speculation, it is my assumption that South Asian youth, whether located in the region or scattered in the diaspora are, like youth everywhere, increasingly unaware of ancient tradition. Add to that the regional specificity of Bharatanatyam, and I believe that the universal recognition of the form and understanding of its stories becomes more and more unlikely. For Westerners, this unlikely understanding is quickly reduced to none. We experience an exotic, visual feast with elaborate costuming and complex rhythms that we can only engage on a surface level, like songs sung in a foreign language that we can appreciate musically and that may have an emotional component but that we do not remotely understand.
This is to say that there is an increasing burden of explanation and/or translation placed on Bharatanatyam performance if it is to be perceived in its fullness. Performances and audiences will differ wildly, but it still comes down to reading the room. Presented in its purest form, certain, very specific, highly insular, audiences will get it. Expand that audience and the communication gap grows exponentially. I don’t know if there is one best way to bridge this gap, but I have witnessed several, and all have been helpful in varying degrees. Here are several very specific examples.
I have already mentioned the performance of Bandhavam and the appropriateness of the background video narrative for its highly selective South Asian audience.
In a very different context at the Arizona Dance Festival – with a younger, almost exclusively Western audience, Archana Alagiri, in her presentation of an original work Motherhood – In Anticipation, projected titles on the video screen behind her of what was being portrayed. I quote from my review:
“…Expectant Mother, Toddler, First Steps, First Fall and Consolation. These literal cues, rather than dumbing down the performance and making it simplistic, allowed the audience to understand what was being portrayed in the moment and appreciate the universality of these very human and touching situations. If classical Indian dance is indeed a form of storytelling, there was now a thread that we could follow for the narrative unfolding in this highly stylized reenactment and a connection to the corresponding emotions portrayed in her fluid expressions.”
At the Natya Conference, (participants will kindly forgive me and correct me if I get this wrong) Shri Baibhav Arekar, the only male Bharatanatyam performer I have ever seen, presented Varnam & Beyond – a tale of a lowly worshiper denied entrance to the temple and the great distress that caused him. I know this because the performer explained it in considerable detail beforehand, painting an elaborate picture of the supplicant and the confounding situation he found himself in. The exceptionally emotive quality of his subsequent performance allowed us not just to follow, but to feel this heart-rending experience. It was truly moving.
I previously mentioned Silambam Phoenix’s collaboration with Convergence Ballet Company, Shoonya Haasyam, an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. This was an incredibly ambitious production which ran headlong into East meets West. Of relevance here is that both traditions were honored. The Shakespearian dialog, while edited, was presented authentically in English voice-over. As for the Bharatanatyam performance, I quote from my review:
“(Srimathy) Mohan noted that “we have very precise gestures to represent man, child, flag, anger, friendship, love, death, etc. Where a word or concept did not exist, the form was flexible enough to carefully derive an equivalent without compromising the tradition.”
“Watching one of the Bharatanatyam dancers performing to voice-over English dialogue was like watching an ASL interpreter, except lovelier, and frankly, better – the physical vocabulary, however heavily accented [by traditional Indian costuming and Bharatanatyam gestures], seemed somehow more universal.”
“For me, this was a profound insight, the ah-ha moment when the exotic veil draped over Bharatanatyam dance was lifted and I believed I could understand the message in the medium.”
Choreographers of contemporary Western dance are plagued by bewildered audiences continuously saying, “I loved it – but what does it mean?” I’ve spent the entirety of my sojourn into reviewing dance trying to address that very question. How are we to derive meaning from a non-verbal art form based entirely on motion – particularly when that motion is intentionally abstract? The great irony here is that Bharatanatyam always means something very specific. It translates aspects of the human condition and fabled experience into pure motion. But Western audiences will never understand it without some reciprocal translation from motion back to the meaning that inspired it. Appreciating the aesthetics of the form can only take you so far. For that reason, I am urging innovation.
When I characterized the issue for Bharatanatyam performers as an “increasing burden of explanation and/or translation” I understand that to be literally true. Suddenly, performances need to be bilingual in some undetermined fashion. And I believe there is some urgency here. The rapid growth of the South Asian community in the Valley, combined with decades of Bharatanatyam students reaching proficiency, all point to the necessity to develop accessible, popularized performances that can engage their talents and draw audiences in the numbers required to sustain them.
If Bharatanatyam does not continue to find ways to come to the audience, will the audience continue to come to Bharatanatyam?
Viewed Re/Viewed
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