Artists lead tributes to Indian dance scholar Sunil Kothari HISTORIAN AND CRITIC ‘WAS A RARE BEING’

TRIBUTES have poured in for dance historian and critic Sunil Kothari, who passed away on December 27 at a Delhi hospital after suffering a cardiac arrest. He was 87.

Leading artists from India, UK and the US are mourning the loss of Kothari, a respected authority on dance forms who was loved by artists around the world.

“He had tested positive for Covid-19 almost a month back and was not in a good condition,” Vidha Lal, a family friend and herself a dancer, said last week.

British Asian dancer Akram Khan said, “Sunilbhai was a deep lover of art, but more avidly he was a deep listerner to those who spoke through their bodies. There are not many listeners left in the world who could record and contextualise so profoundly the dancing body. He was a rare being and he will be sorely missed.”

Renowned Indian artist Mallika Sarabhai described Kothari as “the bridge between many worlds, of dance and academia, nationally and internationally”.

Born on December 20, 1933 in Mumbai, Kothari qualified as a chartered accountant before turning to the study of Indian dance forms. He authored more than 20 books on the subject of Indian dance, including Sattriya Dances of Assam, New Directions in Indian Dance, and also wrote about Bharatanatayam, Odissi, Chhau, Kathak and Kuchipudi, as well as photo biographies of Uday Shankar and Rukmini Devi Arundale.

He held the Uday Shankar chair at the Rabindra Bharati University in Kolkata, and taught in the dance department of New York University as a Fulbright professor.

Kothari received several honours for his contribution to Indian dance forms including the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award (1995); the Gaurav Puraskar conferred by the Gujarat Sangeet Natak Akademi (2000); the Padma Shri from the Indian government (2001); and the Lifetime Achievement

Award of the Dance Critics Association, New York (2011). He was also an elected Fellow of Sangeet Natak Akademi for his contribution to Indian dance as a scholar.

Dancer and long-time associate Anita Ratnam remembered the late critic for his “infectious enthusiasm”. Kothari first met her at a dance recital in 1970 in Chennai when she was a teenager.

“After the performance, he rushed backstage and looked at me and said apsara! apsara! (fairy) in his normal enthusiastic voice. He was not somebody who would just come for the dance, he would even come for the rehearsals, he would talk to everybody present, he wanted to know the whole process. He was part of a very important dance movement,” Ratnam said.

A virtual memorial service held on Zoom last Sunday (3) was attended by prominent artists, including Mavin Khoo (UK); Uttara Asha Coorlawala (US) and Gauri Sharma Tripathi (India).