CHANDRALEKHA - AN EXCEPTIONAL BHARATANATYAM DANCER!

Chandralekha is described as a youthful dancer in her own right! She is acknowledged as a versatile personality and has danced, choreographed, designed exhibitions, posters, logos, graphics and conducted workshops with development and feminist groups! She has written poems, tracks, essays and novels, travelled widely and had committed herself to the ‘art of living’ in a highly originally and creative way! She has emerged as a woman whose life is as vital as her art. Not only has she broken new ground in language of dance but has also resisted the norms of “Indian Womanhood” by rejecting the institutions of family, marriage and motherhood. 

Born on 6th December 1928 to parents – Prabhudas Patel – a free thinking agnostic father and a devout Hindu mother in Vada, Maharashtra. She was the niece of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (India’s 1t Deputy Prime Minister). She was an exponent in fusing Bharatanatyam with yoga and ancient Indian martial arts – Kalaripayattu!

Chandra’s father was a free thinking doctor in whose company she found stimulation and comfort. In his library, she read a wide range of books, devouring (read quickly and eagerly) them without unnecessarily understanding everything. She read the Ramayana, Mahabharata, Bhagavad-Gita and commentaries on these texts. She also read Manusmriti, which induced in her 1st suspicions of patriarchal values. Among foreign classics she read Thoreau, Ruskin, Ingersoll, The complete plays of Bernard Shaw and a lot of Dostoyevsky. She frequently discussed these books and the issue of freedom with her father. After her school studies, she pursued law but discontinued that to take dance as full time profession. She got drawn towards South Indian traditional dance forms and martial arts. And hence moved to Chennai. She started her formal training in Bharatanatyam under Guru Ellappa Pillai. She was deeply influenced by doyens of this art form – Balasaraswati and Rukmini Devi Arundale. Later she choreographed many items inspired by Balasaraswati style of work. 

Though she took formal training in Bharatanatyam, she got interested in fusion dance forms. She wonderfully choreographed many classical art pieces by incorporating Kalaripayattu. She got appreciation for the hard work and efforts. She also invited controversies for her distinct style of work. She described her production work as “celebrations of the human body”. 

Arangetram in Chennai (now a days everywhere) is one of the most important ceremony for a girl who learns Bharatanatyam. This ceremony not only serves as an advertisement of the family’s wealth and social prestige but also the potential of the girl in marriage market. But Chandralekha’s Arangetram was a different affair altogether. There was no family in attendance. This performance was well received by a select audience of musicians, aesthetics and intellectuals. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Martin Luther King were just two personalities for whom she had danced early in her career. She had the privilege to visit the USSR and People’s Republic of China as a part of 1st Indian cultural delegation to these countries. 

She at a very young age was exposed to the cultures of the world, to the murals of Ajanta, the paintings of Picasso, the philosophy of Carl Marx, Patanjali, Isadora Duncan, and Balasaraswati and to a cosmopolitan view. Chandra (as she was fondly called) couldn’t immerse herself in the tradition with the kind of devotion that Balasaraswati assumed. She preferred to tune into its principles and energies through levels of abstraction rather than narrative. 

Chandra trained under traditional Bharatanatyam Guru for the 1st two decades of her life; tried to dance pure Bharatanatyam and the other two decades were spent in almost decrying and demystifying the same form she had trained in! She spent half her life learning and the other half unlearning. But for all posturing, she still used the same positions, stances and format as in Bharatanatyam grammar and just replaced solo dance with group work. After this too became stale, she added kalari and yogic poses but as supplements.

She drew her legendary reputation as much from being one of the fiercely debated artists of modern India as from having presented at some of the world’s best showpiece venues. Her popular productions such as Angika, Lilavati, Prana, Sri, Yantra, Mahakaal, Raga, Shloka, and Sharira are considered benchmarks in modern Indian dance. Her masterpieces reflect the indivisibility of sexuality, sensuality, and spirituality. Chandra’s production “Devadasi” was staged in Chennai and Mumbai between 1960-61 which was an attempt to see Bharatanatyam in the larger context of history and thereby provides a critique about the divine origin of dance. This production attempted to trace the evolution of Bharatanatyam through its manifestations in temple, court and modern stage. 

Chandra moved away from the performing scene (after 50’s) after a decade of success. Between 1961 – 81, she staged just one production “Navagraha” in 1972 associating herself with dance only through sporadic workshops conducted primarily abroad, which enabled her to travel and earn a living. In the intervening years she busied herself with writing, designing, multimedia projects, women’s and human rights movement. 

She returned back on stage by the east-west encounter in 1984 in Bombay, where she presented 3 of her productions with the help of a few Kalakshetra students. With this return she went all over the world – from Moscow to London, Italy, Toronto, Germany, New York and Tokyo – stunning the audience with fiercely sensual and intensely iconoclastic productions. For Chandralekha dance is not bhakti or a sacred tradition meant only to invoke gods. For her it is a passionate, self-exploratory expression of the earthy, the erotic and the elemental. Unlike other classical dancers, Chandralekha never did the traditional “Pranam/Namaskar” before her performances.

Angika – 1985 – A group of people were involved for exploring their bodies through disciplines acquired by means of different physical traditions – dance, martial arts, yoga and theatre. 

Lilavati – 1992 – It was based on the text by Bhaskaracharya. Out of all her productions, Lilavati is perhaps the most popular. In this she has explored the connections between science and art. This production was shown in Udupi, Mysore and other smaller rural centers. It was also shown on television. 

Prana – 1992 – It was another substantial work which can be regarded as quintessence (the most perfect example of quality or class) in dance. Prana means breath, respiration, life, vitality, wind, energy, and strength. The lesson that is illustrated from observing the process of Prana is that yoga practitioners can learn as much from dance as dancers can learn from yoga. It is the reciprocity of the disciplines that Chandra explored in this production. 

Navagraha – In this she incorporated some basic knowledge of the grahas. She used a specific number of dances to represent the numeral traditionally associated with each graha. She also shaped the asanas in accordance with the visual symbols of the particular grahas. Each of the grahas is evoked through a cosmic diagram created by dancers, one dancer representing Surya/Sun leading to nine for Ketu. 

Sri – 1992 – This short minimalist abstraction of the earth goddess (Shakambari) was one of the most daring experiments on herself as a dancer. It is a piece that is performed entirely with the legs, which are suspended in the air with the body placed on the ground. As everything remains still, only the legs create a profound gamut (complete range or scope of something) of fillings which are sculpted in the air with forceful sensuality and power. It is almost like a state of readiness. The body is totally poised for the moment of birth. The visual of a tree and the shadows of vegetation emerge unobtrusively from her out stretched legs and then fill the entire space around her with their natural splendor.

Yantra – 1995 – It was staged in Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai and Delhi in 1994. It is strikingly modernist vision of traditional principals of energy in the body, into the still point of the bindu around which the dancers find their centers in solitude. 

Tantra – In this she has crystallized her choreography around the central image of triangle. Through super imposition and rotation of body. Caresses of moment and ceaseless flow, the form of triangle is dynamised by dancers in unusual perspectives – vertical and horizontal lines, spiral, even the primordial forms of tortoise.






Chnadralekha – From one of her Productions!

She created a school of dance but did not want any shishyas. She created a style and did not wish anyone to clone it. She learnt from traditional Gurus of Bharatanatyam and delved beyond tradition to evolve the ancient dance form. She was a path finder and seeker of true art and knowledge. The theatre she carved out for herself on the sandy beachfront at Elliot’s Beach “SPACES” was her canvas. Within it she traced patterns of her dance as exactly as she did her posters and art work. It was her laboratory of human emotions that she stirred with as much detached intensity as a scientist peering through a microscope. 

She rested in peace on 30th December 2006 after fighting a battle with cervical cancer. Chandralekha’s production have been celebrated worldwide at The Tokyo summer Festival, Hamburg’s Festival, The Avignon Festival, The Asian Dance Festival, Hong Kong, The international Somme scene, Copenhagen; The Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival and various venues in London, New York, Chicago and Canada. She has been awarded the Gaia award for cultural ecology in Italy. The Dance Umbrella award in Britain and has been honored by India’s Sangeet Natak Akademi (the National Academy of Music, Dance and Drama) for her creative dance in 1991. She has also received Sangeet Natak Akademi fellowship in 2004 for her contributions to Indian Dance forms. She is also a recipient of “Kalidas Samman” 2003-04 by Government of Madhya Pradesh.

To conclude, Chandralekha is not only a dancer in her own right, a choreographer and an artist, but also a perfect teacher and a leader. SPACES which has been established through her initiatives has been able to train a number of men and women. One of the strongest signs of her group’s vitality lies in her own ability. She has been quite strict to her principles. She rejected the authority of Guru and disliked been called Atthai, Akka, etc. her way of showing support to her dancers is by going to each one of them before the show and hugging them with few words of encouragement. In this way she is not only admired as an accomplished artist but also as a praiseworthy teacher and a group leader.

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References –
Eminent Indians: Dancers – M.L. Ahuja
Wikipedia
Articles on Chandralekha – Internet
Interview of Sadanand Menon by Shoba Warrier – January 3rd 2007 (about Chandralekha post her demise).

By-
Sneha S J
Kothrud, Pune
snehajagavkar@gmail.com
Sneha S J is a Master’s degree holder in two different yet interrelated subjects – Psychology and Bharatanatyam. She is a disciple of Smt. Ujjwala Pendse of Mudra Nrityalaya and Smt. Anjali Bhatavdekar of Nrityanjali. Learning since the age 6, she is passionate about Bharatanatyam and everything she does!