Firmly in an artiste’s skin

Aniruddha Knight comes with one too many prefixes. He is Bharatanatyam exponent extraordinaire T Balasaraswati’s grandson; he is the first male dancer in nine generations of a family in which women traditionally inherited the performance art; even his name piques curiosity. A burden of antecedence, which he has willy-nilly turned to advantage. “I let people introduce me that way because you need a hook somewhere. Being the first male dancer of my family is a one-line introduction to my art and all that goes with it,” he says.

A couple of weeks earlier, I’d heard him speak eloquently about his family’s art before performing a combined song-and-dance set. In this style, which is rooted in his family’s tradition, the dancer is also the singer, and the music is adapted to the movements. Each line of a padam (lyrical piece) is repeated many times, allowing for on-the-spot improvisation of both music and dance. A playful tug-of-war ensues between the two, resulting in a distinct rendition with every repetition. Knight perhaps represents the last remaining practitioners of this art, which is a seamless blend of dance and music. “The beauty is in its spontaneity. A completely choreographed piece is alien to our culture. It is all in the manodharma (improvisation),” he explained to the gathering.

Standing at more than six feet, Knight looks stately, with a gait that is graceful and unfaltering. He is dressed in a pattu veshti and shirt when I arrive at his home. The performing artiste is discernible even in this casual setting. I am unsure whether to begin with the question of gender and dance; he is that rare male artiste who has embraced the female repertoire on stage and has previously never expressed any inner conflict about it. I surmise he might be open to elaborating on this, so I prod. “The artiste on stage is a genderless (or gender-fluid) entity. When depicting a woman character, there are resources, such as music, from which the dance comes. When the source does not associate with any gender why must the outcome, or the influence of it have one?” he asks. The bias then comes from an external source.

A theory in literary criticism talks about how readers ‘make’ the text. They are the agents that give meaning. Audiences in a dance performance have a similar role. However, they bring their own prejudices to the interpretation, sometimes limiting the art. “People fail to grasp the sensuality within the art form, often relating it to sexuality. Dancing in the female voice doesn’t determine one’s sexuality. That is what they are afraid/unclear about, consequently holding the dance itself in contempt,” Knight says.

His family traces its ancestry to the Devadasi community, which traditionally performed in temple courtyards, re-telling myths and epics through music and dance. While the custom saw an eventual decay, in its heyday it was a profession marked by exclusivity, accessible only to a specific community.

Drawing parallels, Knight says that exclusivity is today perpetuated through a different means — economics. Echoing Carnatic singer TM Krishna’s recent allegations of corruption in the running of sabhas , Knight too contends that the world-renowned December music season in Chennai is an amazing array of artistes who can afford to pay for their slots. “This is a reality no dancer wishes to talk about; it is heretical,” he says. The character of the performances is changing too. An average sabha slot has been reduced to an hour and 15 minutes, and designed to squeeze in as many performances as possible. “During my grandmother’s time, performances began at 8pm and went on till 11-11.30pm. That is how the academy [the redoubtable Music Academy] worked then,” he says.

Besides, as artistes have to bear all expenses, they are increasingly turning to compact discs to replace live musicians. In effect, they lose out on the vital communication between dancer and musician on stage, as well as the scope for spontaneity and ingenuity.

His way of arresting the elitism creeping into the art is through dance classes for children from economically weaker backgrounds. He believes that if you train enough people to become artistes, their heart will be in the right place and the basic weave of society can be changed.

As the interview progresses, it is evident that Knight is less inclined to talk about himself, preferring instead to speak about what ails Bharatanatyam today. He slips into Tamil often, adopting his mother tongue for rhetorical questions that indict the classical dance ecosystem. He laments the misplaced need to canonise dance forms and view them in antiquity. The desire to hark back to a source, book or tradition that is at least 5,000 years old. Bharatanatyam as performed today is about 200 years old, including periodic reformations. “Yes, I am sure we were dancing 5,000 years ago in some primitive cave, around a fire,” he says dismissively.

Before long, though, you glimpse the vulnerability of a performing artiste in a constantly changing world. “There are days I wish I did a nine-to-five job and had no inclination towards dance at all. It can feel isolating to be in a female-dominated art with a predominantly female voice. Plus, there is the onus of being Balamma’s grandson,” he says and lingers awhile on that thought. When he bounces back, it is to an optimistic place, finding succour in an artistic process that involves repeated annihilation to allow creation — “trying to find yourself, shooting yourself down and recreating,” as he puts it.

Niharika Mallimadugulais a Chennai-based freelance writer

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