Astad Deboo

One of India’s first contemporary dancers, ASTAD DEBOO has performed extensively both in the—country and abroad. He has innovated compositions working with puppeteer Dadi Padumjee and life size puppets, as well as classical musicians, and the element of theatre in his presentations is particularly marked. Here he talks to STQ of his move towards a modern Indian dance idiom. Interpolations by ANJUM KATYAL, BIREN DAS SHARMA and SREEJATA GUHA appear bracketed, in italics.

My very first experience of dance was in the city of Calcutta. My mother used to study dance and music home for her own enjoyment and knowledge. She didn’t have any desire to perform. But she was interested in the Indian tradition of dance and music and I distinctly remember her in our living room re she used to study.

I started my initial dance training when we moved to Jamshedpur. There was no pressure either from me or from my parents that I should be sent to dancing school. They saw that I was interested. So they said, ‘Okay, let’s put him in the local school.’ In the local school I had Bharatanatyam in the beginning. I studied it for a very short period of time and the school decided to change the gurus who were teaching. Guru Prahlad Das from Calcutta would visit Jamshedpur twice a week to teach Kathak that’s when I really started.

Even when I was studying at that young age there was no guidance. I was not even aware of other dance forms. I don’t recall any Kathakali dance performance or Manipuri or Odissi. This was between 1956 and the 60s. What I distinctly remember was that I did see Uday Shankar’s film Kalpana and what struck me was the technical wizardry of the whole thing being in shadow. What also got my mind ticking was that there was no religious story to it as such. What I saw left an impression on me and a certain curiosity was  subconsciously left in my mind.

There was, I recall, a certain amount of being nagged by my school friends, but not really to a great extent. On the other hand, the annual school function was never complete without my dancing. I was lucky. Parsis in general are more inclined towards Western classical music and dance. It was not so in my family. I also remember that I wanted to learn piano and my parents told me, ‘If you want to learn an instrument then it’s better that you learn an Indian instrument, harmonium or . . .’ As years went on, I was paying more and more attention to my dance and less to my studies. Then my parents felt it was time to get serious.

When I finished school I really wanted to go to the film institute at Pune to become an actor. But my parents said, ‘No, you should have a proper, normal college life.’ History was one of my favourite subjects in school, history and geography. But I thought, ‘What am I going to do with history?’ So I began to study commerce in Bombay at Poddar College.

I was in college between 65 and 69, and the first two years were just full of going to movies, discos. Though I practiced whatever I learnt. It was in 1967 that Uttara Asha Coorlawala came down from New York (she was studying at the Martha Graham School) and the Murray Louis Dance Company, an American dance company, happened to be on tour in India. Asha decided to do a dance workshop in which I was involved. But it was through Murray Louis that I saw an entire company perform. Through Asha I became aware, saw a new form . . . I was involved in a dance which she choreographed for a women’s organization. It was fun. But when I saw Murray Louis, saw the company perform, I saw other bodies, and I really became aware.

Then, after Asha left, I started slowly in my room, started trying to explore my body, trying to imitate to see if I could do what I had seen. Those were the early stages of my exploring, trying to be aware of my body, away from the Kathak technique. I was also going through my studies. I had to though there was really no interest. I often wished that I wouldn’t get through, so I could try to convince my father to let me pursue dance. On the other hand, I didn’t want to be a failure. So I extended myself to the extent that I could get through. But beyond that I really didn’t push myself hard. And then dance again started prevailing. I remember distinctly that in the third year of the college, (which in those days was not a university exam. year and that’s when I had more time), I started going through the USIS library and trying to see any books on dance, and see films. I also started seeing more of the other classical dance forms. I remember seeing Manipuri dance. Kathakali left a very strong impression on me, the whole richness of theatre in Kathakali which I didn’t find in other dance forms. Also, probably I saw an ensemble work, in comparison to Bharatanatyam or Kathak as solo performance. It left a very strong impression. Again, not having any guidance was very strange. I was curious but not to the extent of making it a passion. I was, in a way, confused. Even in college I used to perform whatever I recalled of the Kathak style and I started adding a few things of my own. Also, seeing the Hindi films of that time was partly influential. I became very involved in dramatics in my college days; I participated in the inter­ college competition and joined the dramatic society. Still today I feel at times that I like to act. But people feel that, no, I should dance. Though I have acted on the London stage . . . I have done two productions. One was written by Farookh Dhondy, Film Film Film, which was based on King Lear but reset in the Indian film industry. There I not only choreographed certain dance segments but I played little cameo roles of a servant, beggar, hijra and the other work which I did was by Meera Sayal, a well-known Asian British actress, who was also a script writer. Her most recent film, which got a lot of attention, was Bhaji on the Beach. She has also been in India with her one woman show. In Bombay we did this play which she had written. It had two cousins, she living in England and I in India. She, though growing up in Britain, was conservative and my growing up in India was more modern. These are the two acting experiences I had. I also did Panchatantra with Naseeruddin Shah and Ratna [Pathak Shah] and a couple of others. We did that for a project for street children. But that was my little flirtation with acting with the Bombay crowd.

So coming back to my college days . . . Yes, at that point I was curious and a bit restless. I wanted to go overseas. I was always in for doing something out of the ordinary. Not to be different, but just that the idea appealed to me. I had a school friend who was senior to me but we had struck up a rapport and a friendship. He had hitchhiked through Europe and that whole adventure fascinated, excited me, and I also decided that after I graduate from college I would hitchhike around Europe. I also asked Asha, we were in touch, if she could help me get admission to the Martha Graham School because she was studying there. She was kind enough to get me admission and I approached my parents and said that now that I was about to graduate I would like to hitchhike through Europe. I told them that I would like to go to USA to study dance and I also mentioned that I would pursue a course in management. I must say that my parents were very supportive and at no point did they say no. But there was a lot of concern from the others: ‘You are allowing your only son to go hitchhiking.’ But my parents said, ‘Okay, you have taken the initiative, go ahead.’ Also I had finished my college. Not that I waited for my results to come out! There was this urgency to leave because I was going on a cargo ship and in those days when there was a lot of restriction on leaving the country there was always the loophole that if you left as a cargo deck-class passenger there was really no need to get permission. I still remember the three pounds that one got as foreign exchange!

In my backpack was my dance costume of a dhoti, a Kathak outfit, some recorded music, bits from Hindi films which had a classical flavour and some regular tabla music with bols which I recited. Looking forward to the entire adventure and excitement which lay ahead of me, I took off. I landed in the port of Khoromshair in Iran where I got off. My first destination was Teheran. There we had family friends from Jamshedpur. That’s where I had my first television appearance. Again, through a crowd of people I befriended there, I came across a very famous Iranian singer, Meher Puiya. He had taught himself the sitar and in those days Indian culture was like . . . you know . . . because of the Beatles and the Hollywood celebrities who came to the Maharishi, in those flower-power days Indian music and anything Indian was in, it was like peace and love, and I fit the bill. Meher Puiya had his own television show. This was 1969. He said, ‘Why don’t you come and we’ll devote an entire half-hour show to you.’ You can just imagine my excitement and to be paid! I remember I got the equivalent of fifty dollars!

There was an interview and there were reports in the press. That really got me very excited. I had taken off with a very meager sum of money and also I was trying to make it on my own, and I did make it, though initial help and backing came from my father and my father’s younger brother. So I decided that in each port of call I would see if there was an opportunity to present my own little dance. I had a time limit. Within two and half months I had to get to the US. I left the ship at Iran and then it was the magic of the thumb which took me from Teheran to Turkey through Greece into Italy^­

I was trying to follow the travel plan which my friend Pratap Chirayath had given me. But I remember waiting at the Turkish-Greek border and this car pulled up and a black American from the army said, ‘I am going to Athens.’ ‘Great.’ It was a 5600 mile straight ride to Athens. So one was deviated. One was going to Yugoslavia. But the route changed. From Iran I went to Istanbul. Once again I appeared on the local television programme. What probably got me into the slot was the novelty of an Indian dancer hitchhiking. In Athens they said, ‘We have no money.’ I said, `Okay, I will do it for the exposure.’ I got a certificate. I started collecting certificates that said I had been on these television shows. This sort of pattern followed. In some countries it worked, and in some it didn’t for the simple reason that I didn’t have the time to stay on. So in that way, I performed on Austrian television. In Geneva I also featured in a programme, thanks to an Indian called Prabjot Singh who used to be in Air India. He was in those days very high profile because he got Salvador Dali to design ashtrays for Air India. He got me on a programme. I did a bit of pure Kathak and then whatever I improvised. But it was still very much Kathak based. Because at that time there was no real studying of any modern dance techniques. It was more like whatever I could catch. Again, money was really tight. One was just basically surviving. And at that point I was just fascinated by the country. I saw a little bit of dance but not really a lot. When I came to London I had to extend my stay because I had not taken my US visa in India. I was waiting for certain papers, not realizing how difficult it would be. I had to temporarily abandon the idea of going to the US and I was extremely disappointed and frustrated. But at the same time I said to myself, ‘Well, let’s make the best of it.’ So I went to the London School of Contemporary Dance. I could not afford to take classes, to enter myself in a full course. So what I did was a barter, exchange. I would sort of teach my dance which was based on Kathak technique and I would take classes at the school. Then again I was just fascinated by the life and I wanted to be with the in-crowd, just hang out. That’s what I did. That’s when I started seeing the local dance companies perform. There I had my first taste of the modern dance technique of Martha Graham because the London School of Contemporary Dance used to teach it. I also took ballet classes because it was a very important foundation for a modern dancer. So I started exploring and the whole experience also brought me to the reality of realizing what my body could assimilate and what my body could do. Right from that point I decided that I was not going to copy, that I was not going to be a clone. I would take what my body could accept and try not to make a fool of myself. When I started really learning modern dance seriously I was twenty-two years old and by then the body had certain limitations because all these years one had been learning Kathak technique and then all of a sudden to learn something completely new, which was also exciting and challenging, was not easy. There were certain movements which I had never thought my body was capable of doing, really extending or pushing my body, trying to achieve the level of technical proficiency being imparted. But at the same time I realized that there were going to be limitations.

(Your basic foundation was Kathak. When you started doing ballet what were the main problems that you felt in terms of the body? -AK. Was it difficult to unlearn Kathak? -BDS)

No, it was not difficult to unlearn Kathak for the simple reason that during the four years in college I didn’t go to any school to continue with Kathak. Though it was there, because all the formative training years had been in Kathak. So the body automatically did the chakkar or whatever one had studied. In ballet one had to stand really straight, tall. The extension or lifting of your leg is not there in Kathak or any other Indian dance. Our Indian dances are all earth connected whereas ballet is sort of ‘above’. Also I found that there are lots of things which the body was being made to do which were not natural. For us, for me, dance has always been a flow, even when there are emotions it comes as a flow. I found that in the ballet and in modern dance emotions are not there. There was a certain amount of emotion, but not the sort of bhakti or spirituality which are still very much embedded in our dance till today. One has innovated, but the rasas are very much present in my work. It is not necessary that one portrays this through facial expressions but through the body one can express and emote. Just the reverence, touching the guru’s feet at the beginning of the class and then doing a prayer to lord Ganesha or lord Shiva, which was part of the dance. So it was there . . . subconsciously it was there.

(What you started saying about the unnatural element . . . that’s very interesting -AK)

As I said, with Indian dance, even when we are learning, the movements flow. Whereas in ballet even when I was doing the Martha Graham technique, it was painful. A lot of that was contraction, and physical pain which I never endured while studying Kathak. Okay, one felt tired it was difficult to control the feet and just let one ghungru ring and then take it to a crescendo or try to come back to the sama. Those were the technical problems one had which one overcame by practising. But while learning [ballet] I found the body being tortured. It came naturally for the others who had studied it. But for me it was like really uprooting myself from one culture.

Again, when I was studying, the whole question of survival was also there. I was not at ease. I didn’t know where I was staying, with friends, or, you know, friends of friends. Studying dance, but still excited with the adventure of just growing up. Dance was there. But at that time I just wanted to live life. Just sort of experience what was happening at that time. I also remember, I was reading articles on actors and they all said that they washed dishes. So I also said, ‘Okay, I have to go and wash dishes.’ So I went to a Bangladeshi restaurant and became a dishwasher for a week. I said, ‘Okay, that’s it.’ It was like when one gave interviews I remember, one said, ‘I wash dishes.’ I worked in a restaurant serving food over the counter. That was another job I did for a while to keep myself going.

What was very interesting in London was I did a show with Pink Floyd, the rock group. There again it came about because . . . when I was hitchhiking I befriended two Australian girls and we met up in London. One of these girls was working in an organization in which Arabella Churchill-Winston Churchill’s grand­daughter was working . . . it was involved in raising money for the lepers in India and Africa. It was called LEPRA. They were doing a fund-raiser. My friend knew that I was dancing and felt that it would be nice to give an exotic Indian touch to the show. Pink Floyd had come out with their album Medal. There was a fashion show . . . it was a sort of masala evening which was being held at the Chelsea Town Hall. It generated a lot of excitement for me because doing a show with a band . . .  In those days they were not really big, or mega, but the whole idea of having live music and then participating in a fashion show also, I had to model one or two outfits. Pink Floyd’s earlier work Medal still rings in my mind. I used it later when I came to India. I did a play in Bombay, Che Guevera, with a group of Xavier’s college boys. Anyway, we had one rehearsal session and the whole thing was improvised. ‘Okay, this will be our music.’ I responded to the music with my little knowledge of innovative dance and my Kathak. So we did a little fusion, mix and match. In London one lived life on a day-to-day basis.

I went to Canada [when my UK visa expired]. Again it was the same pattern. Took a few classes . . . Learning. Then I had a brief flirtation with jazz. There again I just took classes as and when I could. Because the problem of money was always there. I spent two and a half months in Vancouver. That’s where I became involved in a rehabilitation centre for drug addicts, working along with doctors and psychiatrists. They said, ‘Would you like to come and do some dance workshops?’. . . By then I had been studying various forms of modern dance for a year, and still continuing Kathak. So I said I would do a sort of workshop for the people who had come to the centre for detoxication. It was a rehabilitation programme which offered music, painting, dance. I made them participate and try to emote. It was one of the focal points in the programme I was trying to evolve for them. Because a lot of these people had really closed up, were not able to express their emotions. It was a very interesting experience for me to get them to participate or create situations to relax them, make them feel comfortable. I was given a case history and told to act it out. I knew whose history I had, so that I could also observe and try indirectly to see whether they could handle whatever situation had led them to take drugs. It was exhausting for me because I had to emote. I was always emoting and every day, or alternate day, there was a different kind of emotion one had to deal with, act out. That was a different experience of using my dance.

The visa was running out. There was an opportunity of settling down. Friends said that they could help me get immigration . . . but I was not interested. Japan looked very promising. So, off one went.

I went to Japan in July 1970. and left in April of 1971. I landed in Tokyo with limited funds. Youth hostels were always the cheapest, from there one could explore. One started learning the language. I really was very fascinated with the Japanese way of life. At that time the Expo was being held in Osaka and the Indian ‘youth’ delegation came but it was hardly youth! One smart woman who was also connected with the Youth Hostel Association in India got hold of housewives and businesspeople and formed a contingent to come and visit Japan under the umbrella of Indian Youth. An international two week youth festival was being held. So the group leader, we befriended each other, came to know that I was a dancer. They had no cultural component in the group, so she said, ‘Would you like to join?’ ‘Sure.’ I spent two glorious weeks experiencing and seeing parts of Japan and coming to know the Japanese delegation and all the international youth. All the countries had to present their dance in front of Crown Prince Michiko. So, one performed there. We were introduced to the royal family. It was all very exciting. That’s where I made Japanese friends. I started learning a few words of Japanese. I came to realize that one should always learn the slang. It was probably a survival instinct, it put the people at ease. I learned street lingo. The Japanese friends asked if I wanted to come and visit them, they came from different parts of Japan. So I visited them. I lived in their homes and they really took me in. Now they have become part of my extended global family.

In those two weeks, one of the visits I made was to the Kabuki theatre. That really left a very strong impression on my mind. When I came back to Tokyo I went to the Kabuki school, the Kabukiza.

(What was it about the Kabuki that struck you? -AK)

The theatrics. Just the opulence. But at the same time one was so taken with their precision, their meticulousness. Even there I felt that total devotion. When I was studying modern dance I took class, but once class was over there was no relationship with the teacher. The guru-shishya relationship was not there. The whole reverence, the respect, which I saw in the Kabuki, the strict discipline . . . Also the fact that for me, a foreigner, to be allowed . . . because there the teachers are extremely strict. It was not like in India, where if a foreigner wants to come and study our culture, we allow them, knowing fully that it is just a little flirtation.There the Japanese teacher knew that I wanted to study. But he said, ‘No.’ I befriended a student  who was at the Kabukiza and through his good offices I was allowed to just come and sit. I had a language problem. My Japanese was not all that great. The actor who I befriended had a certain knowledge of English. He knew that I was very interested and that there was a certain amount of seriousness.

I was teaching English and I also got a job for a while as a host at a bar meant only for women (like the counterpart of women hostesses for a male club). We were there to sit with them, dance with them. By then I had a certain amount of proficiency in Japanese. I even did fashion modelling for a Japanese designer, Kansai Yamamoto: Everything fascinated me about Japan. So I took every opportunity to explore, hitchhiked through all the islands. I took classes in Japanese Obong Odori, the folk dance called Obong. There I could study. In Kabuki whatever little I could study was what my friend would teach me. But nothing from my teacher.

Japan was like love at first sight. I was very much taken by their reverence, their discipline. Whatever they did, even an alien art form, they were really into it 150 per cent, really wanted to perfect it and try to be better than the original doers/users. That was something which really struck me. I absorbed everything like a little greedy child, right from their food to . . . everything. I remember that I met one Japanese who thought he was French. I don’t recall how we met. But his business was supplying food to the nightclubs. I used to hook up with him two to three times a week and that way I got into the night life of Tokyo, going to all these bars and clubs which one would never have access to. When I had an accommodation problem I stayed with this Kabuki actor. But we both kept such different hours, because I was the night bird and he had to go to study.

I appeared on Seekainge Ongaku, a television show, where I danced, was interviewed. There I met an American painter and we decided on body-painting and dance. It was her show for television and I was sort of the medium. It was like a painter and a dancer working together. There was this huge acrylic canister of paints and this white canvas on the floor. I had a belt with a hook and I was lifted up and she put me into one huge canister of paint and brought me out. So the body came out in different colours and as I was brought down there was music to which I danced. It became a sort of work in progress. It was televised. Eventually a hose was brought in and I was hosed down completely then and there. It was like the end of the show. I still remember that very fondly and distinctly.

In between I went to Korea because my visa expired. That was very brief. I just went, got my visa to come back to Japan, saw a bit of Korean dance, appeared on Korean television. Through the World Expo I had acquaintanceships which really helped me in Asia. I remember Cambodia was very interesting because the entire youth group had come from the dance school. That got me into the royal palace in Phnom Penh. I’ll come to that later.

I went on to Taiwan. I became restless after I found I knew my way around. Then I decided to uproot myself and throw myself into a new country and start the whole exercise again of looking at the place, learning, performing. So this process went on from Taiwan to Hong Kong to Manila, I was on my way to New Guinea, to Sing Sing, the festival where every year in Papua New Guinea tribal peoples gather and participate. But I got robbed. So Australia had to be abandoned. Came back to Hong Kong, spent a couple months there teaching dance and came to Vietnam. There I really experienced the war. I had befriended the journalist from AP who was based there and through him I went to the war-torn areas. And there again, I performed my work. From Vietnam I came to Thailand. From there I went to Cambodia, saw my friends who were dancers, came back, went to Laos. So this went on for three and a half years.

(During all that time, from the dance and theatre end, what stayed in your mind? -AK)

In Taiwan I saw the Peking Opera which was very fascinating and very different from the Kabuki. In the Peking Opera the actors themselves would be singing. In Kabuki there was an ensemble who would sing. Different costuming, different technique, the monkey which is so prevalent in the Peking Opera, in comparison to the lion in Kabuki. In Cambodia there was an entire dance ensemble . . . they danced just for me, I found it very touching, that I was the only one. And I in turn performed for the entire school. Dance was there in front of me. That was my big motivation. You have to move on, you have to learn, experience. My focus was, I’m just going to travel and experience.

After three and half years I came home beaming with all my adventures and experiences. My sister was getting married. I met Sunil Kothari in Bombay. He was the one who had introduced me to Kathakali. He saw me dance and said, ‘Why don’t you go to guru Krishna Pannicker and start studying Kathakali?’ So I started studying seriously, going to him every day for four months . . . With Kathakali the whole thing being on the edge of the feet . . .  which has become a signature of my work. I evolved a dance called Asylum in which I make the toe my child, my lover, my tormentor. The stance of Kathakali really became a focal point. In 1972 I started slowly thinking and developing and moving in a direction. And in that period I did my first dance performance with the college students of Xavier’s College. I choreographed a work, a very crazy theme called the ‘manne-kings and manne-queens’ with lifeless models coming to life. I got my body painted and as a part of the ritual they gave me a bath on stage and I remember that the stage manager was so mad because of all the water, I told him that it would be just two mugs of water. But I told the students ‘Give me a whole bath on stage.’ This was organized by the Time and Talents club, a Parsi organization. It was very amusing and fun and a little bit shocking in those days. I was not trying to be revolutionary, it was just getting your body painted, loving your own kind, your own gender, not the opposite sex. In general it was just being avant-garde. I did that show and I said, ‘Well, I’m still not ready.’ Then I got my visa to America, soI told myself that I have to go where dance is.

So I went back to Thailand and spent a little time there and then on to Indonesia, basically it was Java and Bali where I spent time. I saw a lot of their dance. They are very open, like us. They allowed me to try what I could. I was fascinated with the shadow puppets in Java. The leather puppets. Javanese dance was totally different fromCambodian or Thai or Manipuri … they sort of pick up their bodies and break it, similar to our Indian ways . . . the hands. Javanese Topeng . . . though it was using traditional technique it was talking about political problems. It’s a traditional form, but at the same time they bring in present day political or social problems.

From Indonesia I hitchhiked all the way down to Sydney. There I auditioned for the Sydney Opera House’s opening in 1973. There was an audition for an opera called The Rose Garden where they required dancers. I got the role of the lead dancer. It was very exciting to be part of this huge global event as well as dance with other dancers. That gave me confidence. I got a chance to see aboriginal work, managed to go to Papua New Guinea. It was mind blowing. Coming from different villages, you see the mud people; you see them with really beautiful feathers, covering themselves with loincloths. The whole atmosphere was so electric. By that point I just had started my own body of work.

Then one came to America. I went to study Afro-jazz at the San Francisco State College. I was there for three months and spent about six weeks at the course. I had to leave periodically because of my visa expiring. I made a quick trip to Mexico to meet my Mexican friends from the Youth Congress. The history, the ruins, fascinated me. I got very good response in Mexico right from my very first performance. Since 1974 I have been there ten times to perform. And the last visit was to perform at the festival of the City of Mexico.

In New York I studied the Jose Limon technique for a while. By now I knew that the American techniques were not really for me, Kathakali, I was getting more into that. So I was just taking class but not with any great seriousness. Then one summer I decided to go to Kenya and Tanzania, to look at the Masai dance forms. And one whole year in South America. Brazil is a very fascinating country. Copoeira is an all-male performance form. In a way it is like Kalari, the footwork and the way of using the body. I did a little work with Brazilian singers, I met Milton Nascimento, one of the leading Brazilian singers, who came to see me perform. I did a show with Luis Gonzaginya Jr who died a couple of years ago. He sang for me and I performed. I am very fascinated with Brazilian music and I use Brazilian music from time to time in my work. Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, performing everywhere, seeing their work.

So there were certain elements which I felt went into my body language . . . one felt comfortable, first. Then when one performed one saw the reaction, so one knew that okay, I was projecting and it was not jarring, looking unnatural. That was the process of learning. Certain things I eliminated because I tried and they did not really work. Like jazz. I realized that it is not me. I discarded it. So these things you incorporated first and then you saw that it was not looking perfect. So I dropped it. So that’s the process. Then, as years have gone by, the wear and tear in the body has taken place. The awareness and the strong points I have concentrated on and developed.

By then it was close to four years that I had not returned home and my parents started putting a little pressure on me. But I was having such a good time. Finally I did come home, after four and half years. This was the end of 1977.

I came back and got into Kathakali seriously and started doing a yearly pilgrimage to Kerala to guru Krishna Pannickerji for six weeks. After that I went on to Kalamandalam myself, spent some time there, observing class and just getting into the whole . . . living in the Kathakali environment with various actors and musicians, travelling to different villages, seeing the all-night dance performances. I had a very nice guru-shishya relationship with guruji and he also took a great interest in me. He was not dismissive of my creativity, because even when I was studying with him I did have my own shows in Bombay, and I was keeping up with my work and trying to take it to other parts. Then I had my arangetram in Kathakali. During that period of time, two companies featured in my career. One was the Pilobolus Dance Company, which was American, and the other Pina Bausch. Pina saw my Kathakali work when she came to perform in 1978-79. During that time Asha [Coorlawalla] also came down to India and was studying Bharatanatyam. We did a show together where I did a choreographed work of hers and she did a choreographed work of mine and we did our individual work. Pina saw my work and said, ‘Would you like to be with the Company?’ I said, ‘Yes, certainly.’

In 1980 October I left. Just before leaving, I had my arangetram. I took my entire Kathakali costume and everything along. But I was in for a shock. There everybody fended for themselves. I was a little lost. An American dancer, Arther Rosenfeld, took me under his wing and helped me. Though I was invited there was no stipend or anything. Probably Pina wanted to see how our relationship was going to work. She had a different concept in mind for me, I should do only traditional interpretations in the Indian way. Whereas I didn’t want to be typecast. Here is an Indian so let’s have a Kathakali-based interpretation all the time. She allowed me to come in and be with the company for a good eight months. When the company was touring I went off and performed wherever I had been able to set up my own work. At that time I was performing Kathakali in full costume. Whenever the company performed close by I went along and saw them work. I saw how she choreographed. That was a learning process for me.

Also, being with other dancers, experiencing the whole company. They were all professionals, they came and worked, then went their own way. Because I had just come out of the guru-shishya relationship, which was emotionally very stable, it was difficult for me. But it was interesting to see Pina’s thought processes, how she linked up choreography. She would throw out ideas, whatever she had in mind, trying to get them to express various emotions, like, say, what was your first experience of sexual harassment? Each one would recall, if they had had such an experience, and they would make notes and she would make notes. Or, like, if you saw a beach after many days, give me three kinds of different interpretations, excitement, disappointment, or no emotions. Then when she was clear about what she wanted for that particular segment she would say, ‘I want you to recall’ . . . whatever had impressed her. And she would say, ‘Stick to that interpretation.’ This is one of her processes. Sometimes she would give situations where you had no clue and sometimes there were things she never used. She wanted people to speak in their own languages, in their mother tongues, there were Polish people, French, she wanted them to speak in their own languages if they had a spoken text to express. Also, what was very enviable . . . there was no cost criteria. You want this and it’s there, made available.

From time to time one did see a warmth to her. I recall when she came back last year, I met her a couple of times. After I left the company I did meet up with her a couple of times in New York when the company was performing. We didn’t have much to say to each other. At that time she had her own pressures and I also just kept my distance. I just got to see the performance, connected with some of the dancers I knew who were still with the company. But in Bombay we had a couple of private moments. We had dinner together, she enquired very fondly about my work, what I was doing. I took her around, she wanted to see the streets of Bombay. There was a formal reception but she just wanted to get away as quickly as possible. So we took off. We parked and we walked, at that time Muharram was on. So I took her to that whole area. She was always fascinated by the bazaars, the people. She loved the food stalls.

Her earlier work, The Rites of Spring, was really dance oriented. After that her pieces have been more theatre than dance. I haven’t really been able to work on those lines. I would like to, if I ever have an opportunity of working with actors and dancers. Surely Pina’s influence would be there in getting them to express whatever script I have to do. When I did work with a group of actors from the Arpana Theatre in Bombay I had a script chalked out, though I got them to express what I wanted to. But it was very little in actual theatre, it was more in movement that I got them involved.

(What was so exciting about Pina Bausch’s work? -AK)

The entire production. You marvel at the way she weaves the entire production, punctuated throughout with movements which she choreographs . . . it keeps you on the edge of your seat. Also, I find that each of the performers, even the actors and the acrobats involved, fit into that puzzle and eventually a total picture is formed. I find her work always exciting to look at. I have been fortunate enough to see most of her works and I look forward to a production of hers.

In the 80s I was doing my own thing and looking for a platform, an alternative platform, which brought in people who were interested in dance and who were open. Ensemble work really struck me, but I continue being more a solo performer, largely because I never had the opportunity here in India to do ensemble work. I have done group work in Brazil. In 1991 I choreographed an all-male dance company. But the problem at home is not having the infrastructure. Today dancers say, ‘We want to work with you.’ But funding is a problem. In the ensemble work I have done sometimes, with Dadi Padumjee or Arpana Theatre, there has already been an existing group which I have gone in and worked with. How many people really know my work? Very few people in India have really seen a body of my work. Only in Bombay, which is home, there are people who have seen the innovation in my work from 1978, when I came back to India, till today.

I stayed in India for three years. But after 1980 I took off again and till today I really haven’t spent a full year in India. I spend six or seven months depending on how my work schedule has been overseas. My work has never been, even till today, for the Indian expert. The first generation doesn’t really come. The second and the third generation show an interest because they also have a cross-cultural upbringing. Slowly I find that there are young Indians coming. Also, there is a change in the atmosphere, even in the modern dance from a country other than America or Europe. They are looking at how dancers have taken their tradition and gone on to developing a body or a language, making it contemporary. But I still find a lot of resentment because I am contemporary, because I do not use heavy vocabulary of Indian classical work, or mystique, which Europe is really fascinated with. One is happy that Chandralekha has made an impact, what has been in her favour is that her vocabulary is still very much Bharatanatyam based. Her themes are abstract, but at the same time related to astronomy or . . .

(Tantra-BDS)

Yes. Compared to my work which may deal with a drug problem or with a social problem, or say insomnia, or even an abstract body of work. Indian dancers today have started innovating with dance forms, whether Kathak or Chhau. They turn around and tell me, ‘What you are doing is not innovative Indian, what we are doing is innovative Indian. What you are doing is western.’ Which I am not. My work, now it is with dhrupad music, which is quite prevalent in my works, or I have a work called Mangalore Street which is very much part of everyday Indian life. Or political satires, which I have in my work. That is so Indian. And as I said, right from the word go, when I was innovating or trying to form . . . it was an individualistic style, Indian in foundation . . . just expressing myself as an individual creative person, taking from different elements and forming a body of work. So you can’t say because I don’t use a very heavy Kathakali-based technique that my work is western. It’s not.

When I came back in 1978 I was doing a lot of narrative work because I was trying to get a platform, an audience. My very first work after coming back was a piece called SpaceOdyssey, which I based on the soundtrack of Close Encounters of theThird Kind, a sort of science fiction fantasy. Then I encountered some young students of architecture, Suresh Bhavnani, Ratan and Banoo Batliboi and Fali Unwalla and they said, ‘Why don’t you work with objects?’ So they would come up with ideas, whether it was tension cords which I used in my work called Confluence or a work called Basics which uses three rectangles and a cube. They gave me these inputs for abstract works. So then gradually I started to express and choreograph things where I didn’t have a storyline, where I just wanted to extend my movements with those objects. When one was choreographing and trying to build an audience I did a mixed bag of abstract and narrative pieces. Sometimes I had ideas from a particular piece of music . . . I told Ratan, ‘I want something like a little embryo moving, like a foetus.’ They said, ‘Okay. Why don’t we make you a huge plastic balloon andl et’s see how that works.’ So this big balloon was made and we had an acrylic platform. They lit it up from below. With the smoky texture of the balloon, the light coming through and by just pressing my fingers on the wall of the balloon . . . you see the body moving. That’s how we collaborated. Ratan Batliboi became my support and guiding force. For every production he is there as my technical director and he is full of ideas with regard to lights. I must mention Sam Kerawalla who in the earlier days was also very instrumental in designing my lights. There was this piece called Chrysalis which was done for the Bach centenary for which I had taken Pablo Casal’s Concerto Number One on the cello. This was an abstract work and here I wanted to show each part of the body moving individually. To make it really effective Ratan constructed a huge box which was 12’x10’x3′. In the box there were various windows of different sizes. As we started off, all you saw was the fist. The movement of the fist. Then came just the toes, the ankles. It was very surrealistic for the viewers and eventually different parts of the body got exposed, just the waist to the knees, just the two arms, just the eyebrows, just the neck, part of the upper torso and eventually the entire torso but no neck. Then eventually the entire body coming out. Had it not been for that effective set which really conveyed the work, I wouldn’t have been able to do that. When I came back in 1984 Max Mueller Bhavan held the first East-West Dance Encounter and that’s when I really used dance and theatre, with spoken words. I had just been with the Wuppertal Dance Company, so I did that piece called Manqalore Street. Here I collaborated with a friend who is really my think tank, Sunil Shaubag. I mentioned to him that I was taking a day in the life of a clerk. I really wanted to take a scooter on stage, but we have all these limitations on our Indian stages, so I made it into a cycle. There is a street in Bombay called Mangalore Street and you find mechanics and there is this udipi restaurant and offices and down the lane there is a whore house. I play this character Joglekar and come in cycling . . . I had these masks designed for each character. I go to the cycle-wala and say, ‘Cycle-wala sahab, aap ki cycle wapas laye hain.’ Then I become the cycle-wala, I had a half-cap with a spanner with springs on it, and I go . . . ‘What men sir? TuM aisa  kaiko bolta hain?’ The Goans speak Hindi like that. `Aap ka cycle hamara cycle kaiko bolta hain? Esala Indian maal achcha nain hain.’ `Tum kaam thik se nahi karte ho. Mujhe saam ko cycle chaihe.’ ‘Agar life me kuch banna ho to film star banno.’ I have done it many times. Every time the film star changed, I did an Amitabh Bachchan, Rajesh Khanna, Naseer. Then I transform into this fantasy of being a film star and the film music comes on and then the music breaks and Joglekar is back at work. He sits down and he wants his chai. So he calls for Raju the chai-wala. The chai-wala comes in. Then the boss. Here I used spoken words and dance and it is all done by me.

Most of my works are one-liners and quite self-explanatory, they give you an outline and I want the audience to make their own interpretations . . . I don’t go in for too many explanations. I also did an earlier work on the atomic bomb. This was during my 1978-80 period. I called it The Bomb and After. There I used the Prithvi ceiling and played the mad scientist getting upon the grid and coming down a ladder. Space always inspires me. Often a work, though choreographed, changes because I find a particular theatre has an interesting entry point. So there is always that room for improvisation. Other abstract works include Insomnia in which I told Ratan that I needed a bed. All he did was, on a sort of base he put two pipes where I could just rest my neck and my ankles and the remainder of the body was in mid-air. The whole work, the first five minutes of the dance where I am sleeping and I am unable to sleep and all the contortions and my being restless, it was really fascinating. I came to know my body and the extent to which I could push myself in just being absolutely straight like a plank, or contort but still hold and maintain that straight position and not sink into that mid-space below. Then there were always social problems which bothered me, like drugs. I did a work called Broken Pane about a drug addict. These are all very theatrical. The curtain opens and you see a corpse. Then there is a flashback and I begin as a jolly student, then take to smoking marijuana, go on to sniffing cocaine, then mainlining . . . it is very physical, where I’m having these contractions, I really bang my head on the floor. I am so involved in it that I really don’t feel physical pain, though I do at times get bruised. I even break the window. Recently in Ahmedabad when I was doing Broken Pane I smashed my fist and cut myself. But the show went on.

I did a large collaborative work with Dadi Padumjee called Thanatomorphia, the many faces of death, where I show death as a dancer, death as a lover, death as a liberator and death as a celebration. Though we called it Thanatomorphia we should call it something with Yama because most of the vignettes have been based on Yama.The various characters are all puppets and we utilized two dancers. In death as a dancer there is a huge puppet on the stage and through its stomach the spirit of death comes out and charms these women who are all puppets. Death as a lover is myself and a puppet as my lover. It’s based on Dhrupad music. It’s recorded by the Gundecha brothers but this time I have taken various ragas and again it’s an abstract work where I am just saying that my work and Dhrupad singing is not really at cross purposes, but eventually blends and hopefully I do plan to use more Dhrupad singing in my work.

Then I have done three works on Tagore’s Rabindra sangeet which again I have adapted. The songs have been translated and I have read the text in English and have my own interpretations. These are my most recent works.

In 1985 I was in Paris and I was very keen on performing at the performing theatre of Pierre Cardin. I did an audition for him, organized through Anjali Mendes who works for him. I went off to London and got a phone call saying that Mr. Cardin would like me to go to Rome to meet Maya Plisetskaia, the prima ballerina of the Bolshoi Ballet; and he was keen that we meet and decide to choreograph a dance on her. Also it was arranged that when he presented my choreography I would share the evening with Maya. I was surprised, nervous. I did go to Rome, met Maya, spoke a bit and returned. We did not really discuss the content. It was given to understand that I would have a free hand. So I decided to do a contemporary work, my own interpretation. But when I landed up in Moscow to start work at the Bolshoi with Maya she had her own views of what the choreography from an Indian choreographer should be about. First of all she did not like the music at all. I selected Philip Glass’ music and even the movements which I had conceived . . . she just said, ‘No, no.’ She wanted all those neck movements and eye movements, she really wanted to do an Indian dance for me to adapt and choreograph. There were certain Indian motifs I had used to punctuate it with, but I didn’t have in mind a dance totally adapted on an Indian myth. I had called it Queen of the Underworld and the Philip Glass music I had used was from his album Konanasistkaska. There were a lot of artistic differences between Maya and me. I had a soundtrack of Louis Bank’s with me which was a fusion of jazz and Karnatic music. I played it for her. Now I had already done my homework and there were just two weeks in which I had to choreograph the work for her. I had to redo the sound and make the changes in the choreography. When I was choreographing her I was utilizing her bare arms which is the most beautiful part of her. Also I was trying to get her to perform barefoot but she didn’t want to. She danced on points. Even her whole concept of having an Arabian Nights costume, Mr. Cardin helped me to change her mind . . . So we worked. When I came to Paris she really behaved like a diva, fair enough, she is very respected and a great ballerina, but she started all these tantrums which we did not have to deal with in Moscow. To cut a long story short, eventually the piece worked, and the work was accepted. She did a solo piece for 15 minutes. Generally when she is dancing she has a corps de ballet to back her up, or she has a male partner. But here there were some movements, as the queen of the underworld she rises up, comes up from the earth. A lot of work was on the floor, while in ballet she is either lifted up or leaps. As the choreography moved, emotions came in. Like when the queen was getting very frustrated or when she is put into a corner and explodes . . . the whole theatrics. She is a very theatrical performer in any case. So, using all these points (I had seen her works in the past), I wove the piece. Just the fact that she performed for 15 minutes at her age, when she performed she was 60 plus, was a great feat for her.

After the first night the acceptance by the audience and the critics caused a total transformation. Walking into the theatre on day two was another experience. But in a way it left me a little sad . . . because I noticed that even in her interviews she did not mention my work at all. But for me it was great. Maurice Bejart, Patrick Dupont, Zizi Jean Maire, lots of big names in the dance world came and saw the choreography.

(How did her own work contrast with yours? -AK)

She had 15-20 dancers behind her. Her sets and costumes were very elaborate. Mr. Cardin had designed her costume; the set was also specially designed. It was her choreography, Chekov’s Lady and Her Dog. It was all very ornamental and pretty. She came on stage with a parasol, or she came out with dogs and her consort was there, who picked her up and put her down, other dancers came along. Whereas in my piece there was just one wall and she was in a smoky, earth-brown chiffon one-piece suit which Mr. Cardin had designed. She was from the underworld and her costume was also earthy and dark. It was performed in Paris at the Espace Cardin. It was good that I was able to be at the Bolshoi theatre and see the Company rehearse and perform. So it was an interesting experience.

What was also very interesting was my China tour in 1988. It was a private tour which I was able to arrange through a dance critic in China. I performed there for the Chinese artists, in Beijing, Shanghai, Xian, Canton-for the dancers, the musicians, the actors and a few other people invited by various organizers. I always had a Chinese musician performing with me and it was totally improvised. I never knew what instrument the performer was going to play. A couple of hours before I would get to know that he would be playing the piano, the pipes, or singing. So, it was also interesting for the audience. They were quite keen to see how a traditional Indian classical dancer had stepped out, because they are also doing contemporary dance in China, to see how I use the classical base to create a style of my own. In that way, I had a very interesting interaction with the Chinese performers, singers, actors, dancers and choreographers I met.

For the past six years, I have been working with The Action Players, a Calcutta-based deaf theatre company. It started off with short workshops in movement and one year the artistic director Zarin Chaudhuri asked if I could come for a longer period of time to do an intensive workshop. I also found the idea very challenging. So I came down for two weeks and worked with them for six hours every day and got them into a pattern and discipline of coordinating their movements. I found a way of giving them a beat. As they are hearing-impaired, music was to be utilized in the background for the viewers’ benefit. It worked well. Whatever music I chose and the way I broke the counts and did the choreography it somehow worked and I decided to do a production. We called it Dancing Dolphins. The first half is poems from Vikram Seth’s Beastly Tales which has a contemporary setting, and solo mime works by the actors. The second half was a 35-minute dance, basically five vignettes which I call a tapestry of movements. While I was choreographing, the actors came at various points at their convenience. If there were six actors to work with three hours every day, I created a work with them. Basically the approach to the work was to show, ‘Here is a group of hearing-impaired. But they all coordinate simultaneously.’ They work with different objects, relating to them, whereby you recreate different spaces for them. For example, the performers get on the cubes and within that very limited, tight performing area they perform together. That has been done on four cubes. So you see four different sets of people. Or you see all of them with chairs, how they balance on the chairs and how they work. There is another aspect, total improvisation. They do it through me. I come on the stage and improvise and they mirror me. Your reflexes have to be really fast. That’s what I have also shown in this particular work Dancing Dolphins

(What was interaction like with other performing arts communities? Did you feel that they were accepting you more or were you able to explore new things by looking at their works? -AK)

In the initial stage there was a lot of resentment. For a long time I never had dancers coming to see my work. Even today very few of our leading dance performers have really seen my work. Certain gurus have, Kelucharan Mahapatra and Birju Maharaj-ji, and I don’t think that either of them really approves . . . but we have a cordial relationship. Last year I was in Bhopal . . . they had the Purush Festival. There the Kuchipudi performer Venapati saw my work and really liked it. He really marvelled at the control and even the imagination. In Bhopal I had done very recent work and also a work from my earlier days called Rituals which is done with forty candles on stage and the whole ritual of going and getting purified for the sacrifice and then being yanked up by ropes and hung in mid air. But he appreciated the use of my body and space and also how I interacted with dhrupad music. Chandralekha, Daksha Seth, Bharat Sharma, Sonal Mansingh, Mallika Sarabhai, I know have seen my work. I had a very good response when I was at the Krishna Ganutsava in Madras, it was a lecture demonstration and the connoisseurs and stalwarts of Indian classical dance were there. They responded very well and one of them in the question-answer session asked, ‘How would you do Bhutanam Moksham (a Kathakali story)? They were not aware of Asylum in which I used my toe as my child. That’s how I interpreted the whole Putana story, with my toe becoming Krishna and my life being taken away as he sucks the milk.

But as years went on I started getting invited, like the Khajuraho dance festival was a real breakthrough for me, then the Elephanta Dance Festival. These festivals are mainly for Indian classical dance performers and just getting invited was breaking the ice, and there was recognition. Prior to that when I came back I encountered Dadi Padumjee, the puppeteer. Over the years we saw each other’s work. In 1988 I asked him if we could collaborate, and he also liked the idea. I did a work called Friends. Again the title is self explanatory. There are two friends and at one point in the relationship one tries to dominate the other. Eventually the puppet becomes the dominant force and they try to patch up, but we leave it at a very ambiguous level. Does the friendship really take off again or does it take off on a different level? It worked well and we took it to Delhi, Bombay. I also took it to the Khajuraho festival.

At the same time I was in Bharat Bhavan [Bhopal] doing a workshop for the Rang Mandal actors there.That’s when I heard the Gundecha brothers sing at a small private concert. I was really taken by their singing in the dhrupad style. We met up and we said, ‘Could we have an interaction?’ Which we did. There was a sense that it would work if we had the opportunity and time to work together. So when the Khajuraho dance festival invitation came up I said, ‘What better opportunity?’ So I asked them. They were keen but at the same time a bit apprehensive. Also, they had to take permission from their guru. But from the beginning it was very clear that I did not want them to experiment, I wanted them to sing in dhrupad style. Eventually they said yes, they would sing for me at the festival. One of the other criteria of the festival was that either I weave a story around the temple or work on a poet from Madhya Pradesh. So I decided, along with Satyadev Dubey, to use Muktibodh, Lakdi ka Ravana. Sunil Shanbag helped me condense the poetry. I made Ravana a politician and I had an actor from the Rang Mandal repertoire reciting each verse. The singers sang in different ragas, depicting different emotions as the poetry continued. Through my designer Ratan and his wife Banoo we used the Kathakali curtain. She made black banners and faceless faces were drawn on them depicting the crowds coming closer and closer. I had two panels and I worked in between the two panels. The Kathakali influence was there using the curtain and introducing the characters. It went down very well. Both the solo work which was called Ahavan which is a dance dedicated to the space, in which I take the blessing of the space and do an abstract work on raga Bhimpalas which the Gundecha brothers sang. The funny part of it was that when it worked so well I decided ‘Okay, I should get it across to Bombay and Delhi.’ But they came under a lot of pressure from Government cultural bodies and even from their guru, that they should not sing for me. They hadn’t seen the work but probably felt that as the Gundechas were coming up as dhrupad singers it was a bit early for them to experiment . . . They were not experimenting, they were just singing and I was interpreting their singing. But there was a problem about them coming with me to Hong Kong for the Asian Arts Festival. They sang for me there, and that broke the ice. They got a lot of feedback. Amjad Ali Khan and Pandit Jasraj-ji had seen me perform to their taped music and at some point they met the Gundechas and complimented them. So when the Purush festival in Bhopal was organized they sang for me live on the closing day of the festival. Again all these other great gurus ­Kelucharan Mahapatra, Dhananjaya, Birju Maharaj-ji, and all the male performers were there. So I think they will perform live now.

(It strikes me that a lot of  your interest seems to lie in ensemble work and choreography, apart from being an individual dancer, right from the films you saw, everything that struck you was the ‘theatricality’ of it. Can you talk about this? -AK)

Yes, because of the fact that while growing up there was never group work, ensemble work. So that always fascinated me, to see how dancers, bodies, combine together to form patterns, to form stories. Again, in South-east Asia, solo dance was never really emphasized as within our traditional forms. It was always ensemble work. Naturally it fascinated me. I even participated when I was there. One of my major frustrations here is not being able to interact or work with other dancers initially because the dancers did not really want to be associated with me . . . I was sort of the enfant terrible. ‘What is this Indian boy trying to do? Imitating. . .’ I was not imitating the west. By then I had so much of the South­east Asian influence. Here I was trying to be an individual, but I was always shunned.

(How do you understand dance theatre? How would you describe it? -AK)

Well, in my own work, dance is the medium, but the presentation is theatrical. The characters I develop, change into, maybe taking on different characters, the theatrics comes in because you are transforming yourself from one character to another. Even when I am dancing with other actors, or with puppets, there are certain elements in choreography where it’s not so much movement as just the stance, projecting the character, taking an attitude. So that way my work is really interwoven and there is no demarcation between theatre and dance.

(Do you feel that what you do is dance theatre? -AK)

Oh, yes, definitely. But there are certain pieces of mine which are just pure dance with no theatrics involved. It depends on the themes I choose. In a political satire like Lakdi ka Ravana, or even Rabindranath’s song Ekla Chalo Re, the theatrics come in. Because I am interpreting it as my struggle in my dance, I as a modern dancer fighting the classical milieu, the resentment. There theatre comes in. But in a piece like Reaching Out or Endless the whole work is just in movement.

(How would you define your aesthetics? -SG)

When I perform . . . it is with feeling. I am still exploring. When I dance I immerse myself completely, not that I go into a trance or anything, I am very much aware. Even when I do abstract work there is a lot of devotion to my work. It is probably because of my Indian classical background, from that culture. I am proud of it. That makes my work so much more meaningful to me. The other day I was dancing and somebody came up to me and said, ‘When you dance you are really enjoying it.’ Even if it is pain which is being projected there is that bhakti in it. That comes across. At times people say, ‘We don’t see a particular technique. You say that you have studied Kathakali and modern dance techniques. But we don’t see that.’ I say, ‘Look, you have to see the work as a totality because I am forming a new language of my own. There are sometimes elements of techniques I have studied which can be seen.’ I have now started using my body like plasticine, it is moulded and at times it is just being elongated and elongated. I don’t have to stop, there don’t have to be jagged ends or bumps, just one flow. I articulate through my body, my movements, my rasa and bhava. I just let the viewers interpret it for themselves. Sometimes they say, -‘We have no yardstick because no one else is doing it.’ But now people in India have been exposed to a lot of dance companies from overseas. Last week I was in Bombay and Pandit Jasraj-ji rang me up. He had seen my work a year and a half ago in Vancouver. He was keen that some of his other colleagues and people should see my work. I did not explain the work to him. I just said that this is an abstract work. He is a musician and he probably saw it in a different light. I do receive a lot of feedback from the musicians today. Even Amjad Ali Khan and his wife saw me perform and they said, ‘It is very refreshing, what you are doing, there is a beauty in it. We do see that there is a lot of devotion in your work. There is tapasya also.’ People want me to articulate all the time. Okay, I may give a brief about the thought processes. But. . . When you go to see a painting you don’t corner the painter and question him. You just look at that and enjoy it for the moment. It is not necessary that I have to have a myth behind it. But I do give a certain framework to it. Like, basically my titles do give you something to hold on to, to make your own interpretation. Sometimes, after a couple of performances the thought process changes and I start improvising within the framework. But it is only my technical director and other people who might see that transformation taking place. So there is a framework and within that framework there is a lot of free flow. Again, it changes because of the space. One gets very inspired by spaces, not just proscenium spaces but interesting, different spaces, and then the work takes on a different dimension. It is not that I just go and perform, do something. No. I have an idea in my mind.

(How do you really choreograph a dance form, an idea? You said that there is a system, a methodology. It is never unstructured. How do you work out a dance? -BDS)

You have a certain idea in mind and you start with whatever movement you think of, feel. It is very difficult to explain how ideas come. There are sometimes stories behind what I am doing. It is not necessary that my work is all abstract. There is a theme. Then one structures around it. Take, for example, Insomnia. One is not able to sleep. There are many factors, Memories which haunt you, whether in your childhood, puberty or adulthood, these are the little vignettes one can make into a piece. Each time it is different. Thanatomorphia started because a friend passed away of AIDS. The process keeps on growing. Right now I have the idea of working on the two animal gods in Hindu mythology­ Hanuman and Ganesh. This is been in my mind for three years. I talk and I listen. Maybe some day it will just hit the right chord. I want to collaborate with my friend Dadi Padumjee on this. I might even bring in an actor or two. There are ideas which lie dormant or semi-dormant. I worked with drug addicts in 1970 in a therapy programme, but it was only in 1987 that I got round to doing a dance about a drug addict. I did it when I felt that it was right within me. When I choreographed it I did not do it because it was fashionable at that time. Like people ask me, ‘Why don’t you do anything on AIDS?’ But one does not want to do something like, ‘Oh, I want to talk about the trees being cut, the rivers being polluted.’ One has to weave . . . I’m thinking of using birds, a whole congregation of birds, and through the ideas of the birds the story is told.

(Most of the art forms can deal with very complex ideas, even political themes. Dance probably remains one of the forms which has rarely been used to convey political ideas or contemporary problems. Is dance essentially a form which cannot deal with such themes? -BDS)

No, it can. As I said, there are two problems, the choreographer who presents it and the audience. Will the audience accept it? Today in the west it has changed. But here you are put into boxes and they expect that you are going to do this or that. If you step out they are shocked or surprised. I have done a little bit of political satire in my work. In Lakdi ka Ravana I presented Ravana as a politician. I came in an Ambassador car with four black cat [commandos]. I showed how he dupes and terrorizes his subjects till they start getting restless and revolt.

Our dance tradition has never really touched on politics or social issues. Maybe social issues but never politics. Okay, politics were present in the Mahabharata. But nothing more concrete than that. No, there is scope, though it becomes dance theatre, not pure dance. Eventually it depends on the person who is choreographing and directing it.

(What is modern in modernIndian dance? -BDS)

Quite a difficult and tricky question.What is modern in modern India today? Right up to 1984 there was not very much happening in the Indian classical dance genre that was modern. After that changes began. But the choreographers still feel happy with their classical vocabulary and taking from that they continue to do work in a contemporary format, or so they say. But I don’t find that happening. It’s basically sticking to themes or ideas which they feel safe with. They all happen to revolve around the mystic, the tantrik. Okay, they have taken poems by certain Indian poets but . . . for them probably it is modem, but in my eyes nothing revolutionary is happening yet. Not that I am doing something revolutionary either. But I do take on abstract works or even contemporary works. Or again I use other performing artists, mixing media, collaborating with them.

Then again it is not necessary that dancers or theatre companies should venture modern works, when they do not really have the vocabulary or the ideas. The fashion right now is to add something modern; something contemporary, to our classical work, or step out. But if they are not convinced they should just let it be and continue with the classical work they are familiar with.

(But what is modern? -BDS)

Something not pertaining to the classical mould. But that does not mean using a classical mode and interpreting. I would say it is modern when you are interpreting contemporary problems. The way it is presented, whether with the help of visuals, clever stage craft, costuming, in speech, in projecting, these elements are put together. Because these aspects are not really used in our Indian classical presentations, especially in dance forms. You can use your classical foundation and from there, if there are other marriages with other art forms, or just bringing in another style or work. But again, it does not have to be brought in just to make it ‘modern’. No, that does not work. You have to see that the marriage really takes place.

Daksha Seth uses Chhau, Kalari and Kathak in her work. Chandralekha has martial arts and dance in her work. But there is nobody who is doing works in mixed media. Theatre people are using more movements in dance form but not the reverse, with dancers using theatre . . . maybe there are dancers who would like to experiment. But there is no platform, there is no infrastructure, no support. Today the public might be open to seeing an experimentation from a dancer. And slowly the movement of contemporary dance . . . a new language is emerging. It is again like all individual choreographers, Chandralekha, Daksha, Mallika Sarabhai, Aditi Mangaldas, Manjusree Chaki Sircar, all have their own companies, creating a style and body of their own work. Most of them have a classical technique as their foundation, which is fine. There is no reason to discard that and take on an alien form or technique. It depends on the choreographers. The newer lot like Ranjabati Sircar or Bharat Sharma or Daksha Seth have all been to the American dance festivals. They have exposure to American dance techniques. Maya Rao is another dancer who is doing innovative work in the Kathakali technique.They are all using the techniques they are used to and from there going on to choreographing. But I still see a lack of abstract, social or political work, no controversial themes have been tackled. yet by them. Okay, Aditi in one of her works tackles a social problem, harassment of the woman. But by and large, I still don’t see much of political satire or socially relevant problems.

(Do you intend to say that the contemporary Indian dance forms are in the process of changing from traditional/classical to modern, but thematically they are still very conventional? How do you explain this refusal of modern dance? -BDS)

First of all, our classical works all stem from tradition and religion, which is so deeply rooted in our growing up; and it has been the environment, the atmosphere, in which the arts have been patronized and presented. So people can always can relate because through the years they have been exposed to it. All of a sudden to come up with a modern version or interpretation . . . in my experience if a company from abroad came and did modern dance, even if it was bad the audience would go to see them and initially they would just accept, ‘It is going to be good since it is coming from abroad.’ But if somebody from our own milieu and atmosphere tries to present his or her own interpretation, they always look at it with a very negative attitude. They don’t give the artist the platform to express in a form other than the classical form. Initially it was the audience, but now I find it is the promoter who is the main stumbling block. Because he or she takes the decision and feels that the audience is not going to like or accept it. They do not want to take the risk. Whereas overseas, even in Indonesia and Taiwan today there are platforms and support. The other thing which is lacking in this country is commissioning of work. Here one has to produce oneself and handle everything right from the production aspect, trying to find a sponsor who will present you, it really adds more work to the individual creative person.

All photographs accompanying this piece show Astad Deboo at an informal performance in the temporary studio space of artist Chittrovanu Mazumdar, in Calcutta in August 1995, which is referred to in some detail in the editorial. Photographs by Naveen Kishore.