The colours of divinity

In her white salwar kameez,with her blue dupatta tied around her waist,Mahdavi,a 30-year-old Iranian,is acting out her sense of freedom—the hair,streaked blue and tied back in a pony,is merely a hint of that self-assertion—at the International Centre for Kathakali in South Delhi.

In Tehran,where she comes from,dancing on stage comes with strict rules. Modern dancing,especially when it involves the mingling of the sexes,isn’t allowed because it is seen as corrupting,and women have to cover their head.

But Mahdavi,a graduate in Drama and Acting from the University of Tehran,says that while the rules are stifling,she will play by them when she goes back at the end of her three-month stay in India. “Whatever it takes to learn Kathakali…And anyway,it’s easy to pass off Kathakali as dance-drama,” says the 30-year-old who plans to go back to Iran and perhaps teach dance. “But more than teaching,I hope to dance myself. I want to be on stage,always,” she says.

It’s this determination among the students that makes the International Centre for Kathakali—set up 50 years ago to promote Kerala’s highly stylised classical dance-drama in Delhi—relevant today,over 300 years after Kathakali was recognised as an art form patronised by the royalty.

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It was under the Raja of Kottarakara,a princely province in Kerala,that Kathakali flourished in the first half of the 16th century. Traditionally,Kathakali performances were held in the open,at night,and usually went on till the early hours of the following day. A play like Unnayi Varier’s Nalacharitam was played over four days,with each lasting several hours.

There would be no electric lights,no dais (only an enclosure) and no props. A large oil lamp would be placed in the centre,its flickering light lending an otherworldly aura to the entire act—stories of demons and gods told through padas or songs to the accompaniment of drums (the chenda and maddalam).

“Kathakali combines dance,music and gestures and that makes it a theatre of imagination. Since these were ordinary people portraying mythological characters,the acting wasn’t meant to be realistic. In Kathakali,it’s the make-up that decides the character and the character that decides the make-up,” says Professor Omchery,principal of the Bharatiya Vidya Bhawan and one of the founder members of the Kathakali Centre.

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But with the end of royalty,Kathakali had to be institutionalised for it to survive. So while poet Vallathol Narayana Menon (1878-1957) set up the Kalamandalam in 1930 as a Centre to revive and promote the art in Kerala,in Delhi,a group of Kathakali lovers set up a centre in Rajendra Nagar in 1960 to take this classical dance form to the Malayalis settled in Delhi.

Over the years,as the Centre moved from Rajendra Nagar to the now two-storeyed building in the leafy Qutab Institutional Area in South Delhi,it continued to evolve and along the way,challenged a few set patterns in the art form.

As part of modernising,propagating,promoting and popularising Kathakali,the Centre,with Sanal Edamaruku as president,is producing several new plays based not only on traditional and mythological stories,but also historical stories,European classics and Shakespeare’s plays.

One such performance was Shakespeare’s Othello,which was first staged at the Kathakali Centre in 2009. “The main character,Othello,is the Moor of Venice,a black man or an Arab. But in Kathakali,men with noble virtues are painted green,that is,their face is pacha or green. But since Othello’s ethnicity was key to the story,we painted his legs,hands and arms black. On the other hand,the villain Iago,a white man from Venice,had to sport a black thadi (beard) to match Kathakali’s costume for the evil character,” says Edamaruku.

Evoor Rajendran Pillai,the vice-principal of the Kathakali Centre,played Othello and Thiruvattar B. Jagadeesan took on the role of Iago.

These experiments with the traditional structure of Kathakali have ruffled puritans. But Edamaruku says that to grow as a world art,“Kathakali must widen its traditional horizon. Vallathol had said Kathakali is not a Hindu art. It was a royal art,which was later patronised by upper caste Hindus and then became a temple art.”

The Centre,he says,is now working on a Kathakali play that’s based on the Finnish national epic,Kalevala.

The Centre has challenged a few other bastions. For instance,while Kathakali has traditionally been a male-dominated art form,with men taking on roles of women,that’s now changing. About 70 per cent of the 120 students at the Centre’s Kathakali School are women,says Edamaruku.

While classes are held at the Centre on weekends,on other days,the Centre’s teachers visit their students to hold classes. The Centre has 20 teachers across all disciplines—dancing,drums,vocals,and make-up (or the chutti). “Sometimes when parents accompany their children to the Centre,they too try their hand at chutti,” says Rajendran Pillai,the vice-principal of the Kathakali School.

Meanwhile,Pillai’s student Mahdavi is now preparing to play ‘Panchali’ for a school anniversary function.

To enroll,contact Sanal Edamaruku at 09873588940