Dance without frontiers
Some years ago, Vinod Mehta, the then dynamic editor of Outlook magazine, told me he’d received a call from a dancer asking to be featured, and why? — because she was a foreign exponent of classical Indian dance. He laughingly told her that this was no longer an anomaly as Sharon Lowen has brought foreign artists into the cultural mainstream years earlier with her Videshi Kalakar Utsavs.
The first Videshi Kalakar Utsav ( Foreign Artists’ Festival), was supported by the Delhi government’s arts body, the Sahitya Kala Parishad, in 1990. Under the dynamic leadership of Surendra Mathur, a golden era for SKP, I was given a free hand and full support to visualise, organise and invite artists. This pioneering festival changed forever the idea that non- Indian practitioners of Indian classical dance and music could be students, but not “artists”. The success and vitality of this festival continued inspiring six annual festivals, each accompanied by seminars that marked the reality that Indian arts were becoming international, not only to audiences around the world but also in that the performers themselves waere coming from a wide variety of cultural origins. The concept of these festivals and seminars of art without frontiers evokes a generosity of spirit required more than ever today. In acknowledging both the truth and fact that we all share an inner reality that is reflected in art, the many facets of aesthetic expression are potentially available to all without restriction of borders and boundaries, physical or conceptual.
Artists are drawn to a particular aesthetic genre because of inner resonance with the form, which crosses boundaries of region and even nationality. The sadhana ( devotion to work or practice as a means toward self- perfection) of an artist is inherently difficult and success of a performer uncertain, more so for those born outside the tradition who leave the security of their home culture to devote years of their lives to their chosen art.
Opportunities for foreigners are limited more by restricted entry into the world of performance patronage than by lack of artistic skill. As more nonIndians have been drawn to Indian classical dance in recent years, the standard has been improving. Just as many top Western classical Ballet and Modern dancers are from Asia, traditional Indian classical dance forms are becoming international as boundaries fall between borders and art. Initially, I was reluctant to go forward with a festival focusing on non- Indian artists, not because they weren’t equal to their peers, but because I had personally resisted, for decades, the evaluation of my own performance as being made upon any basis other than artistic. I came to realise that this festival, and the discussions shared in the seminars, was indeed important, if only to establish that the acceptance I had achieved need not be unique. Each year’s festival revealed one or more outstanding performances among others that were as capable as their Indian peers; each year there were more than enough promising and experienced artists to present. Especially prior to the first year’s festival, but even in subsequent years, I’d fielded the public’s recurrent doubt that, while there could be one or two rare exceptions to the “foreigner as student but never artist” assumption, there could hardly be enough videshis ( foreigners) to sustain an entire festival. That doubt, I feel, has been firmly answered now by the high quality of the performers, accepted and judged on merit, on par with their peers.
The criteria for selection was foreign artists who were equal to their peers, whether Kak ke Kalakars or mature performing artists rather than “good for a foreigner”. This meant introducing artists like Malayasian Ramli Ibrahim and the Italian Ileana Citaristi in Odissi, Trinidadian Radhica Laukaran, Canadian Jai Govind and Dominique Delore from France in Bharata Natyam, Brigitte Chataignier from France in Mohiniattam among other styles and dancers.
A few of the classical musicians who made a mark were Drupad vocalist Nirmalya Dey from Bangladesh, Pt. Hari Prasad Chaurasia’s French disciple Francoise Roditi, and American Khyal vocalist. American Justin McCarthy in Bharata Natyam and Veronique Azan in Kathak were Delhi based so I would not claim to have introduced them, but was happy to feature them in the first year.
Over 50 classical dancers and musicians had the opportunity to share their work with Delhi rasikas. Performers need to share their art with an audience in order to grow. For too many, it was t h e i r f i r s t chance to have l i v e orchestra accompaniment,
l e t alone to perform in India. It was ground breaking of SKP in 1990- 96 to support this need by classical dancers and musicians from other countries to perform in the capital city of India and it is heartwarming to see that ICCR took up this charge after an extended gap. In those years, most newspapers carried arts reviews, unlike the current practice of visual and performing arts events relegated to local social page 3 news. ( The Asian Age a notable exception!) Clearly, having perf o r m a n c e reviews from India was a g r e a t a s s e t to the credibility of these artists when returning
to their home countries. No artist was ever repeated, as