Indian dancing

INDIAN DANCING

SUBJECTS

Mythology has turned out to be an unprofitable field for the Western choreographer. Fokine’s Narcisse and Daphnis and Chloe, the latter accompanied by a Ravel score, failed to grip audiences. Ninette de Valois’s Prometheus to Beethoven’s score, and the ballet production of Orpheus and Eurydice, suffered a like fate. The one outstanding success of a ballet based on a myth was Nijinsky’s L’ Apres-midi d'un Faune, and then, we are told, its popularity was due to ‘its original treatment en profil and the swccés de scandale of its first presentation’.

Indian dancing favours legendary themes, as we have already noted. The Puranas and the Mahabharata and Ramayana epics ptovide many settings in which the dancers assume the roles of mythological deities. This is why Eastern dances are austere and reverential, and the dancer seems carried away by the very spirit of the gods he interprets, becoming completely absorbed in the performance. The European dancer, on the other hand, occasionally appears detached and mechanical, as if his body were on the stage to perform routine technicalities while his mind is far away.

Another point of difference is that the Indian dancer creates enjoyment in his audience by himself extracting the fullest pleasure from his dance, while the Western dancer sometimes consciously sttives ‘to please the public’. Hence the flimsiness and tinsel fabric of many modern ballet themes, which sometimes resemble acrobatics.

HARMONY VERSUS DISUNITY In both European and Indian dancing the aim is fusion of the sister atts of music, painting, and dancing. This harmony is mote easily obtained in Eastern natya than in Western dancing.

Indian dance sets are usually very simple, but those of the West ate inclined to be elaborate. The tendency in Russian ballet to subjugate the choreography to the décor dates back to the period (1909-1914) when Diaghilev, with his love of painting and his connoisseut’s taste, gathered around him such masters of the brush as Benois, Bakst, Golovine, and Roerich. Examine the ballet Petrouchka which belongs to this period. Says Serge Lifar of it:

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