Lessing, Shakespeare, Blake in dance-theatre on Commonwealth stage

NEW DELHI - Foreign literature met Indian performing arts in a creative mix on the cultural stage of the Commonwealth Games 2010.

Noted dancer Navtej Singh Johar interpreted Nobel winning novelist Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing with the help of Bharatanatyam, traditional Indian natyashastra, contemporary dance and improvised dialogue to comment on racism, apartheid, colonialism, human suffering, struggle for freedom and death in a 30-minute solo act at the Meghdoot theatre Monday.

The Grass is Singing was the first novel published by Lessing in 1950. Set in the former Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, during the late 1940s, the story explores racial hate, colour walls and human suffering through the lives of Mary and a white farmer Dick Turner trying to make profit from his farm. The lives of independent Mary and incompetent Dick takes a fateful turn with the arrival of Moses, a black helping hand.

I don’t know why I chose the book. I had a host of Commonwealth countries to pick a story from - but I chose Rhodesia because it was so socially and politically complex during the colonial rule. The story was powerful. A woman was going mad and trying to run away to her childhood from her adult life. I wanted to highlight the stand taken by the protagonists. The stand makes them human, Johar told IANS.

The dancer has spent eight years in New York, working for several contemporary dance companies.

It is an alternative way of learning literature. I captured the essence of Mary (the heroine)’s trauma with an improvised dialogue ‘I want to go back to a life not this life.’ It was not there in the book, Johar said.

The dancer will take his production to schools and colleges in the capital for children to understand Lessing’s pioneering work.

Indian dance-theatre has been sourcing content from western literature for several decades, largely due to the influence of colonial rule, which saw the introduction of western art, literature and politics in India.

Kathakali dancers in Kerala have enacted Biblical dramas since the 1950s to reach out to people at the behest of the Church, Kathakali guru Sadanam Balakrishnan said.

I remember taking part a Kathakali production of David and Goliath in the Seventies and watching Mary Magdalene episodes, Balakrishnan said. A month ago, I took part in a five-day Kathakali festival in Chennai that rendered five western classics - Julius Ceaser, Othello, Oedipus, El Cid and Psyche - in the traditional Indian dance theatre format. Leela Samson played Desdemona in my production of ‘Othello’, the noted Kathakali exponent told IANS.

Balakrishnan’s story of Shakespeare’s ‘Black Prince’ came alive in the traditional Kathakali format Tuesday with a 25-member cast in the capital.

He set Othello in the Manipravalam script which is a mix of Sanskrit and Malayalam.

The difference between Indian plays and western plays is that Indian plays are rarely tragedies. They end on a happy note unlike western plays that end in tragedies, the guru pointed out.

Kathakali dance theatre artist Maya Rao adapted an excerpt from Nigerian poet Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi’s short story, Quality Street to narrate a humorous episode about a village wedding in an affluent home.

As you read it, even though it is based in Lagos, you can imagine it transposed, with a few details changed, to several cities across the world. It is deeply relevant , she said.

Actor Ashish Vidyarthi presented a dramatised version of the verses from A City’s Death by Fire by Derek Walcott while Preethi Athrye’s sourced her rendition from a poem by Sri Lankan activist poet D’Lo.

Dancer Geeta Chandran set three English poems, including “Tyger” by William Blake, to classical dance.

“All forms of arts and literature have an inter-relation,” observed leading director from Manipur Ratan Thiyam. Thiyam directed Henrik Ibsen’s When We Dead Awaken in Manipuri.

Their (arts) approach have a kind of universality. They try to remedy the struggles and sufferings of human beings - almost like altrusim, Thiyam told IANS.