Ratnottama Sengupta in conversation about Kitareba, a contemporary dance performance on immigrants, with Sudarshan Chakravorty, a choreographer, and founder of the Sapphire Dance Company.
“Ankita! Rohan! Dipak! Mamta! Manish!”
A stentorian voice was calling out the names, just as they do during roll calls in jails. And in answer to every name a hand went up in the air — on stage, or in the auditorium. This was from a cast of dancers who had lived the lives of immigrants. “And me?” suddenly Sudarshan Chakravorty broke out in an anguished cry, “What about me? I am nobody!”
That’s when the tragedy of these uprooted souls hits you. And you ask yourself, “What is their identity? Before August 1947 they were Indians. Before March 1971 they were Pakistanis. Today they are Bangladeshis. Likewise so many passports and so many borders have changed. So many have left Punjab or gone from Kerala, so many have left Spain or sailed from Syria, so many trudged from Mexico or flown from China…”
But is the number of immigrants rising? And in the age of internet, what is eroding our identity? I decided to discuss the issue with Sudarshan Chakravorty as I walked out, deep in thought, after a performance of Kitareba by the contemporary dance group, Sapphire Creations Dance Company.
Ratnottama Sengupta (RS): Why did you think of doing Kitareba, a contemporary dance production on immigrants? Are you inspired by a movie? Or any news item? Or perhaps some incident in your own life? Or did all all three combine to spur you on?
Sudarshan Chakravorty (SC): Various personal events and conversations in recent years have triggered me to use the word ‘kitareba’, a Sylheti greeting. My father could speak no language other than Sylheti — and he would unapologetically speak the tongue with one and all, even those who couldn’t understand. I saw a pride in my father about his language, his culture and Sylheti roots.
I was at times embarrassed when, in local grocery stores, he would ask for a brand like ‘Maagi’ – which loosely translated means wench. Or ‘Keo Karpin’ – the hair oil in complete Sylheti accent. But gradually I realised that it was part of his being. My cousins in Shillong would always complain of how tiresome it was when they had to speak with me only in ‘Calcuttian’ — read, pure deshaj Bangla. For them, it was a ‘foreign’ tongue. That was the seed of thoughts about shared language, culture, ritual and more. I wondered how the districts of Meghalaya and Assam, particularly Cachar, speak the same language, sport the same lifestyle, eat the same food, practice the same rituals, and have the same attitude. I became aware of this ‘oneness’ much later, in 2018, when I got to make a road trip to Sylhet via Guwahati, Shillong and Dawki. Migrants had perhaps trudged the same route in 1947 and then in 1971! Speaking this language that was a binding factor regardless of the differences in their religion or caste.
I was born in Shillong and had innumerable relatives there. And if I heard their dialect, even if I was standing in the Circuit House in the middle of Sylhet, I felt a strong kinship that made me emotional. This is what prompted me to ask, what is it that makes a new set of people — or a place — so familiar or ‘known’.
This production stems from my core interest to share this story which I carry in my DNA. I am not directly impacted by the Partition or any war, but the stories shared by my parents have influenced me – as have the movies I have seen over the years. These include films from both sides of the border – Ashani Sanket, (Children of War) , Ora Egarojon (Those Eleven People, Bangladesh) – as well as Schindlers List. I have also stored up conversations and anecdotes overheard in crowded bus or public spaces, both in India and abroad. There, when you are alone and isolated, the unexpected murmur of a known language comforts you. A sudden hug by a stranger saying ‘kitareba’ changes everything and transforms that space into ‘home’.
The Nazi atrocities as seen in films built around the holocaust acquired more vivid contours when I visited Poland and the Silesian museum to see for myself how the galleries use photos and installations to depict the concentration camps in Poland. It firmed my determination to recount my story since it is no longer about me or my country alone. Now it is a global narrative.
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RS: What are the other productions of Sapphire Creations that focus on social issues? What were the issues – Environment? Gender equality? Gender fluidity? Apartheid? Any other?
SC: It has always been important for Sapphire Creations, which turns 32 this year, to use messaging as the spine of our dance. This form of creative expression, I strongly believe, can be a potent vehicle of raising social consciousness. So we have designed several productions on taboo subjects. This has defined our position, not only as a Dance Company – we as dancers too have come to understand the true power of the arts.
Sample these. The Alien Flower (1996) explored the theme of same sex love nearly 20 years before India decriminalised homosexuality. Indian Erotica : Vedas To Millennium (2000) spoke about changing the power equation that existed between men and women, from the Vedic period to the times of AIDS. Positive Lives (2004) built on people living with HIV. Ekonama (2016) contextualised global warming and climate change using Purulia Chhau dancers. Ekaharya (Losing Oneself, 2018) explored gender fluidity using the technique in classical dance where the same body, without changing anything, portrays different characters and even changing gender. Now we bring you Kitareba about the loss of identity of uprooted lives.
RS: How developed is Indian contemporary dance to deal with such serious content?
SC: Indian dance in particular builds on gender fluidity and role reversal adapting mythical stories of Gods. These stories are part of our traditional texts, used even by established gurus. However, eyebrows are raised by puritans when we apply the same inferences to daily life and talk about the real life of common people.
In 1996, I was cornered by my city’s dance fraternity after a production on same gender love. I was accused of importing Western influences into our cultural scene. It made me retaliate with Indian Erotica — sexuality discourses in Indian history, literature, architecture, and religion through my lens.
Times have changed, yes, but it is still taboo to depict many topics openly. Fortunately media and audience supported us immensely, for they understood that only such discourses can make the arts truly ‘educational’ and it need not remain mere ‘entertainment’. That, indeed, was the basic premise of the arts in India, as defined by the Natyashastra.
And now discourses on health, sex, and gender are becoming compulsory and applicable in schools and universities too, for the physical and mental wellbeing of the students.
I realise that we take lot of time to realise the immensity of any reality. In the process we lose lives! It was only when HIV became a reality in Delhi’s Tihar Jail — where only men were kept — that the authorities woke up to the reality of homosexuality and started distributing condoms!
For me it is important to voice my opinion through actual performances and not just discuss the issues in conferences and seminars. So I continue to do this through Sapphire, despite resistances!
RS: Form or content – what is more important in Contemporary Dance? And what is your foremost concern?
SC: I have been doing Contemporary Dance since 1990. Our generation was self-made. We were desperate to find a voice, our own personal vocabulary. In 1992-93, I started describing my form as ‘Electric Dance’ as I didn’t find a suitable nomenclature to define my form: the existing ones defined the traditional dances while the Western Modern or Contemporary was not what I was deriving from. I was inspired by people like Manjushree Chaki Sarkar (1934-1999), Narendra Sharma (1924-2008) and Astad Deboo (1947-2020), to imbibe a lexicon that is rooted in my DNA and craft my identity as an Indian dancer.
There was no internet then, so all our influences emanated from the immediate experiences of watching these Gurus – in their studios, homes, or on stage. These resonated with my urge to take Sapphire down a path that was not a derivation but my own destination.
Although we opened several windows of the West, through collaborations, to update our radar. But more than the form, these collaborations stressed a deep understanding of what is in our roots. For only our sensibilities and identities will give a ‘face‘ to Indian contemporary dance without stamping it a homogenous global form!
So, in my view, content and form must be equally balanced. One must not confuse them as two are independent identities. Sometimes the challenge is to find ‘newness’ in form to convey an ‘old’ content. At other times one must find a ‘form’ that is accessible for all to understand a new content.
It remains a challenge for me after all these years…
RS: Tell me about your journey in dance. What led you to dance – which was even in 1980s considered a feminine art expression?
SC: My father was an engineer working in Nagaland of the 70s. He was posted in Kohima, Mokukchung, Tuensang, Dimpaur… During the Durga Pujas my mother would gather the neighbourhood children and put up a dance programme. I would quietly watch the rehearsals as a four-year-old but one day, I cried in desperation because I wanted to be on the stage. This was during a Durga puja in Tuensang — I got up on the stage and never came down!
I was quite a ’star’ kid as the only male dancer performing in schools and colleges. My tryst as a director too started in grade 3, at the age of nine. Visiting my father during the annual summer vacation, I made all my friends, children of our neighbours and of father’s staff, to toil for a month and put up a variety show in our quarters. This community show built up my confidence as director, a team leader. And we put up dance, skits, Boney M. songs. That seeded my desire to lead my own dance team one day.
In Kolkata, Ma would always take my sister for dance and music lessons, never me. But I ended up getting major roles in the para[1] programmes as I accompanied my sister for drop and pick up and never shied from demonstrating my skill – to the utter surprise of the organisers. So my sister remained a ‘sakhi[2]’ dancing at the back while her male brother assumed the lead role and became a ‘star’ attraction in the shows.
Soon I started getting offers to perform for clubs, and local newspapers carried my interviews. Meanwhile I was noticed by my dance teacher, Bandana Dasgupta in school — Julien Day in Ganganagar. Later Principal Sheila Broughton encouraged me to pursue dance. Ms Dasgupta started teaching me Bharatanatyam which remains in my muscle memory, making it an ardently core pedagogy of my own style in Sapphire productions.
After university, I started to take lessons in Kathakali from Govindan Kutty. This, most notably, influenced my dance vocabulary. But I was always restless to find new combinations and to see how I can change it a little and personalise it.
I showed the same zest in my studies as I combined material/content to make my ‘answers’ completely different from others!
This attempt to be ‘me’ and not blend with others made me the centre of attention. On the other hand my not so deep voice, my femininity, was drawing flak. But I countered them all…
During a sports day in school there were separate lines for boys and girls. It was naturally assumed that all the boys will play sports. I was left with no option but to join the girls since I was in the cultural/dance group. The sport teachers repeatedly cautioned me that I was in the wrong line. I smiled and said, “No sir, I am in the correct line…”
And I chose to stay in that line forever!
RS: Did you learn from a traditional guru? Who? What is the merit of being rooted in a classical dance form/ tradition?
I started Sapphire with my own understanding of cultural dances and the Tagore dance dramas. Then I wanted to break barriers. I deviated from tradition to find my personal path away from the influences of my ‘old’ learning. I told my students, too, to erase what they have learnt before in order to find their own language.
However now, in my early 50s, I realise that I was saved from the deadly impact of ‘globalisation’ which makes everything the ‘same’, because culture code cannot be same everywhere. And it is this uniqueness that makes your craft, your skill, your form — your own and contextual.
The dancers and choreographers who emerged in the 70s, 80s and 90s came from tradition. I was the only one amongst them who found my own way. Not just in my senses or intellect, physically too, I could keep my dance grounded. It helped me to recognise what I have received as body aesthetics in mandala, tribhanga and charis.
My exposure to various dance forms — from Uday Shankar style to traditional forms including poetries and songs of Bankimchandra, Rabindranath Tagore and Kazi Nazrul — gave me the lens to look at my ‘modernity’ and the ‘global’ perspective of my art without being bereft of my roots. Without disowning the cultural context of being a dancer from Bengal, from India.
That, now more than ever before, I hold like a litmus! So today, the growing trend in the independent dance scenario to ape the West — that is completely uprooted from its soil — makes me nervous. I feel they can’t sustain this journey without knowing from where it all began. Most are not aware of the roots. And we need to help them look at those pages.
RS: So why had you felt the need to break away from tradition – the trodden on Indian forms — and go international?
SC: I think it had started with the feel of isolation.
In mid-90s, when we did Alien Flower and dancers and critics started saying we are an aberration, we wanted to counter that. We brought in dancers, choreographers and dance companies to find solidarity. We started INTERFACE, Eastern India’s First International Dance Biennial, in 2002 to share the work of fellow contemporary dancers in India and abroad. We shared the context with the audience and critics who loved my dance. And they started to accept our point of view. We built upon the gains with INCRES – International Choreographers Residency.
INTERFACE and INCRES were started to cue not just us but also the media and audience about the changing trends of contemporary dance worldwide. This found a community which, I am proud to say, we have sustained to date.
RS: Tell me how these collaborations with dancers, choreographers and musicians — from Israel, Poland, Malaysia, Croatia — have enriched you? And have they helped Indian Contemporary Dance?
The most important achievement of Sapphire was to keep these collaborations and relationships alive over 20 years. Many choreographers came as strangers but became friends for life!
It all started when our leading dancers and a couple of ‘new’ Contemporary dancers started to find faults in our technique and process of fusing improvisation as a tool. The first regiment of International choreographers who came for INCRES in 2006, patted us saying they had not seen such freedom in other dance companies in India. There, everything was driven by technique, in order to forge a homogeneous ‘global dance’ form. Some of these choreographers like Michel Casanovas from France, Christopher Lechner from Germany came back again and again. Marc Rossier from Switzerland collaborated with us in our production Parivahitam (2010) with live music that travelled to eleven cities in India. Such collaborations immensely impacted us, artistically, emotionally and spiritually. Their humility and surrender was difficult to find in Indian collaborators. Selcuk Goldere, a Turkish choreographer from Ankara, helped with us mount Ekonama.
Recently we celebrated 20 years of our association with Jacek Luminski. With this Polish choreographer, we have mounted several projects like Roots Of Dance. And this year we have co-produced What I Have Not Seen Before for the Kolkata Literary Meet 2024.
We also have a strong connection with Joseph Gonzales from Ask Dance Company of Malaysia. Ever since we met during our first ever international tour in 1999, we have remained associates!
These associations have forced us to view contemporary dance through several lens. We have examined threadbare the context of practicing contemporary dance. Most of them encouraged us to build upon our roots. They showed this by using theirs. For instance, Jacek uses Polish folk dances as his take off point while Ask Dance Company integrates traditions in their lexicon.
But none of them believe in a ‘copy-paste’ approach. They sniff the core aesthetics of tradition and use that to enliven their dance idiom.
It can be inter cultural, or inter interdisciplinary. It might use songs, like we have in Kitareba, and musical instrument. These impart a viewpoint to me and my dancers and broaden our perspective.
RS: Who would you identify as the progenitor of Contemporary Dance in India? Has Uday Shankar been given his due as the father of this distinct dance style?
SC: Many a leader has carved out a new path and given new direction to Contemporary dance in India. In 2020, we could have celebrated 100 years of contemporary dance In India. This might sound childish when compared to our traditional dance streams which have a 3000 year old history! However, this is a reason why contemporary dance was not taken seriously. Both, the form and its practitioners were a ‘minority’, and they were side-lined by the mainstream dance fraternity. This included critics, festival organisers, policy makers as well as Government cultural agencies.
The problem started with the very nomenclature and it continues till date.
So if Uday Shankar was the Father of Indian Modern dance, it was practitioners like Astad Deboo, Daksha Seth, Jaychandran, Navtej Johar and Padmini Chettur who gave post-colonial meanders to the stream. It was only in 1990s, when the cultural wing of German Embassy in India started the East West Encounter as a conference, that a discourse was set in motion to define the intersections and destination of contemporary or experimental dance form as an ‘offshoot’ or an ‘independent’ form.
It is also to be seen that, since most contemporary dance practitioners originally came from tradition, they had a ‘hangover’. They were reluctant to come out of its clout and demand acknowledgement for their own form. That weakened our journey for many decades. So Uday Shankar was lost at a Pan India level where the very basis of his hybridity was questioned by puritans. The irony of it is that here, now, contemporary dance discourse is all about being intercultural, mixed media and interdisciplinary!
The confusion remained and expanded. We find it difficult to decide ‘What is the contemporary dance practice?’ Be it in terms of form or idiom, philosophy or vision, now everything is ‘contemporary’. And it is ‘fashionable’ to practice across India.
RS: Does Sangeet Natak Akademi (SNA) — the national body for performing arts in India — recognise it? Did you have to struggle to get grants from the Ministry of Culture? Is your art being taught in any Indian university?
SC: SNA started recognising it as ballet, and from 2000 as experimental dance. It was apportioned slots in Young Dancers Festival and Nritya Sanrachna, where Sapphire performed several times.
As far as I know, to date, no university in India offers contemporary dance in its course. Worse: it does not figure even in ‘gradation’ for television or for government scholarships and fellowships. This further disqualifies the form, making it difficult for the young generations to keep faith and pursue it at an academic level.
RS: You have choreographed dance for Bollywood movies as well as for Bengali films. Are choreographers being given as much recognition as a traditional dance guru? Or, are Bollywood choreographers given greater recognition than a dancer?
A difficult question!
On one hand, if a serious dancer is associated with films, he loses all his ‘points’. He may draw flak for diluting his form, for commercial gains. Funny, isn’t it, this accusation? We enjoy little patronage and less support. So where will these practitioners go? And if they find acceptance in the small window of such work, that shows their vitality, adaptability and skill set. Shouldn’t this be lauded?
Contrast this with the life of legendary Gurus like Birju Maharaj — they found both money and fame in choreographing for films!
The irony of it is that songs and dances abound in Indian movies, in every region. More so in Bollywood, which is now an internationally recognised nomenclature. But not a single academy or university teaches film-choreography. So we are all self-taught and that makes it all the more difficult.
Bollywood dancers and choreographers have an edge since they have had four to five generations of film choreographers. Many have worked under them as assistants and that has enhanced their skill set to handle film choreography. This has made them a more desirable choice than us, self-taught choreographers.
RS: Why do Indian films (read, Bollywood) — which thrive on ‘Bollywood dance’ — today have no dancing star of the stature of Vyjayantimala, Waheeda Rehman or Kamal Haasan? This, even though we now have reality shows on TV channels; we have films like Yeh Ballet[3], and documentaries on the dancers who featured in that film. We have documentaries on choreographers like Saroj Khan, and biographies on dancers like Zohra Segal and Madame Menaka.
SC: There are many reasons for this. These generations were much more invested in learning (taalim) and pratice (riyaaz). They did not connect the two with monetisation. Now the stars start learning a craft or skill just to portray a certain character. Surely this need based approach to learning and up-skilling can’t be compared to those who lived these arts. Theirs was a discipline, a ritual, a part of daily regime irrespective of what they got or lost.
Today the idea of perusing arts have changed — more so in cinema. So we have no Vyjayanthimala, Waheeda Rehman, or Jaya Pradha. These stars were tutored from a young age by traditional gurus not for film roles but to become artistes.
Now the very definition of ‘artiste’ is jeopardised. I ask my students as a rhetoric, “Why do you learn dance?” So the stories of Saroj Khan and Madame Menaka will be archived while ours might get lost!
Art needs patience, perseverance, devotion, dedication, discipline and determination… And yes…. Surrender to the Supreme!
[1] colony
[2] Friend literally, but here it refers to being a part of a chorus
[3] This Ballet
Ratnottama Sengupta, formerly Arts Editor of The Times of India, teaches mass communication and film appreciation, curates film festivals and art exhibitions, and translates and write books. She has been a member of CBFC, served on the National Film Awards jury and has herself won a National Award.
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