Bharatanatyam practitioners across US, UK... India are giving the dance form a contemporary urgency: Leela Samson

Leela Samson's latest book - Dance of Freedom - is a quick read at just 104 pages. (Images via Instagram / Spandan and Aleph Book Company)

"Dance whichever way you like... and show the world why you call what you do 'Bharata Natyam,'" Leela Samson writes in her latest book 'Dance of Freedom: A Short History of Bharata Natyam'. This brief explanation of what comprises a good Bharatanatyam performance, reads like a call-to-action. To anyone thinking about the future of Indian classical arts, it serves as a reminder that pitting tradition against inventiveness in the classical arts is not just inadequate, it's a missed opportunity. A misreading of the ways in which this tradition responds to its context and evolves.

Samson writes in 'Dance of Freedom' about activists like E. Krishna Iyer, for example. During the British Raj, Iyer stood up to the colonizers and contested the idea that Bharatanatyam - or Sadir, as it was called then - was regressive and linked to prostitution. She writes also about her guru and Kalakshetra founder Rukmini Devi Arundale performing at the Theosophical Society in the mid-1930s, risking censure and paving the way for thousands of women who wanted to learn and perform Bharatanatyam regardless of their caste. For these reasons, among others, 'Dance of Freedom' feels like a fitting title for the book (it's not a title she came up with, but one she thought "might be appropriate" when it was suggested to her, she tells Moneycontrol).

'Dance of Freedom' is not Samson's first book. In 2002, she wrote a book on the joys of classical Indian dancing for the National Book Trust, aimed at 10-12-year-olds. But where 'The Joys of Classical Dance in India' offered a primer to classical forms from Bharatanatyam (which gets its name from the sage Bharata) and Manipuri to Chhau, 'Dance of Freedom' zooms in on Bharatanatyam - by turns contextualising it within India's larger history and cultural movements, and focusing on the greats and greatest movements within Bharatanatyam.

Samson has also forwarded the arts and their evolution in India and abroad as a performer and teacher, as well as through past roles as chief of Kalakshetra (2005-12), Sangeet Natak Akademi and the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC). She is also the founder of the Spanda Dance Company and the Leela Foundation.

Leela Samson (seated, in green sari) with then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, at Kalakshetra, Chennai, in 2011. (Image credit: Paul Cohn/ US Department of State via Wikimedia Commons)

In an email interview, Samson talks about the present moment in Bharatanatyam, its "metamorphosis" in every part of the globe, the 'thinking dancers' who "broke from the norm" and gave "later generations a particular angle to the forms, that were totally individualistic", and the rasikas who can sometimes bring new perspectives to a performance or text. Edited excerpts from the email interview:

In the past, Bharatanatyam could be seen as constantly responding to and evolving with the socio-politics of the day. The role that E. Krishna Iyer played in resisting the British characterization of Bharatanatyam as a regressive practice linked to prostitution, and Rukmini Devi Arundale's performance in the devadasi style in 1935 risking great opposition, are some examples you discuss in the book. If you were to convince a young person today of how alive Bharatanatyam is to the times, what two or three arguments and examples would you offer them?

If anyone could see the spread of the style to every nook and corner of the world, they would see the metamorphosis that it is undergoing. Our practitioners across the United States, in Europe, in the United Kingdom and Australia, in Singapore and Malaysia, in China, Japan and in what was the Soviet Union are interpreting it to the best of their understanding, while giving it a contemporary urgency according to their particular language and socio-political circumstance and the varied nature of their own pupils. Even in India, students of the dance are giving it a statewide twist and reference to their own martial, folk or religious legends - both ancient and modern.

Early on in 'Dance of Freedom', you write about the Tanjore Quartet - four brothers who re-imagined Bharatanatyam under the patronage of a king who supported the arts, and then took their art to other courts as well. Is such a re-imagining possible, or even encouraged and supported, in Bharatanatyam today?

It is happening, as mentioned earlier. Manipur has strong classical Vaishnava traditions, Kerala has the martial art traditions, Tamil Nadu has Tamil textual references like the Theyvaaram that they explore, etc.

Given that classical forms have a certain vocabulary and a strict grammar developed over their long history, how much room and agency does the intelligent performer have to make the form their own?

There was always space for innovation and individuality. Our classical forms and what we practice today have the impress of one-century-old reformers - Guru Kelucharan Mahapatra and Pankaj Charan Das in Odissi, Guru Pandit Birju Maharaj and Pandit Kundanlal Gangani in Kathak, the doyens of the Kalamandalam and Sadanam schools of Kathakali, Guru Ammannur Madhava Chakyar in Koodiyattam, Balasaraswati and Rukmini Devi and a host of others in Bharata Natyam - the list is endless.

Grammar apart, these stalwarts gave later generations a particular angle to the forms, that were totally individualistic.

In the book you also write about the "'thinking dancers' who broke from the norm", explaining that these could be people from higher or lower castes, urban or rural backgrounds. If you could help us understand this better with examples of some performers from the 21st century whose work we could look out for or even look up?

All the above-mentioned dancers were ‘thinking' dancers. Add to that a list of others like Uday Shankar, Dr Padma Subramaniam, Chandralekha, Kumudini Lakhia and so on.

In the final chapter, there's a description of how audiences may be moved by a text "without any prior knowledge of its meaning, simply by the power of expression, the power of recitation." Could you expand on this?

I do not have a copy of the book before me, but this is true. One often finds the odd rasika who has studied a particular text and gives you an insight about it that you did not know or say that they had no insight into the particular interpretation you did.
On the other hand, I have met people who say they were deeply moved by the sahitya and music, or by the abhinaya, without knowing quite what it meant.

At the very end, you write about Bharatanatyam being inclusive in every way. Including in terms of who can learn and perform the dance - which, you write, includes slum children. But the impression today is that it's been associated with the upper castes. The best-known practitioners, teachers and innovators in the field have been Brahmins, with lower-caste performers or performers outside the "inner circle" saying it's harder for them to enter the space, book performances, and advance their careers...

There is history. And then some! I do not believe that the higher castes have held sway for 300 years. Before them were the devadasis. They held sway for a longer period of time. Our memory and impressions seem to cover a recent history of 75-odd years. Before that, women hardly performed across the land. It was in fact groups of men who performed.