She is petite and can easily be overshadowed by taller dancers, but this lasts only till the dance begins. When that happens, irrespective of who is dancing with her, your eyes refuse to move from her grace, beauty and the passion with which she moves on stage. She is none other than the doyen of Kathak, Aditi Mangaldas, a perfect balance of being rooted in traditional culture, form and modernism.
If on one hand she is depicting our mythology through Kathak, she also talks about social issues that stir her soul using the contemporary form. Aditi will be in Bengaluru with her dance choreography, Immersed, as part of SwarTaal, Jagriti’s annual festival of Indian classical music and dance aimed at celebrating classical performance arts, music and theatre. The other artistes at SwarTaal are Kapila Venu and TM Krishna.
Immersed, Aditi says, over phone from her home in Delhi, is about Krishna. “He is one of the most beloved and interesting gods in the Hindu pantheon. Literature, architecture, dance, music, poetry, sculpture… there are visions of Krishna everywhere! Can one make Krishna into a belief or a concept? Can one hold Krishna as something fixed and static? Can he be of any gender, class or faith? To me, Krishna is the everflowing river, the unquenchable flame, life itself.”
An artiste who has dedicated her life to Kathak and dance, Aditi started dancing when really young. “I cannot attribute the decision of taking to dance to myself. My parents realised I shared my day’s experiences by jumping on a table and dancing away. My mother wanted to dance when she was young but was not allowed to and then my parents decided to put me through music, dance and visual arts to give me an overall education.”
This was when she was four, Aditi says. “Nothing happened till one day I went to a dance class and fell in love with the teacher, Kumudini Lakhia (the legendary Kathak dancer) and she became my guru. That is how Kathak happened to me.”
Kathak has had a challenging history, says Aditi. “It has travelled through temples, Mughal courts, kothas, proscenium stages and now is one of the foremost styles through which a contemporary work can be created. When dancer Akram Khan uses Kathak as a source for dance, it shows Kathak had not only its classical entrants but also possibilities of explorations inherent within itself. Kathak has many windows that one can open. This has excited and challenged me as a dancer.”
Aditi trained from the age of five to 22 under Kumudini Lakhia and Birju Maharaj from age 22 to 26. “They were magical years. I refer to them in the present tense, as their work lives on. Their perception was also different from the others. Kumudiniji was always ‘Kathak without Krishna’, while Maharajji was ‘Kathak is Krishna’. Yet, they could, together, live, dance and explore the dance simultaneously and together, proving that having diverse viewpoints do not mean hating one another, but celebrating the difference just as in nature and life.”
Aditi is one of the few classical dancers who is as comfortable treading the contemporary dance path as she is the traditional. “I am much more comfortable in the classical form, but, again, the rules of classical dance are not written in stone. It is like a river that flows constantly, rejuvenating itself. If this seed of Kathak is watered with contemporary sensibilities, with sounds and steps from across the world, then the tree that grows out is deeply rooted in Kathak. I find the exploration challenging and exciting.”
Talking about her process, the winner of the Gujarat Sangeet Natak Academy award (2007) and National Sangeet Natak Akademi award (2013), says, “First the work is conceptualised with a text, poetry, a painting that I see, or a light reflecting off from a leaf.”
Once Aditi says she was stuck in a traffic jam. “A tree shed all its yellow flowers on my car when hit by a gust of wind. That inspired my imagination. Whether it is a classical or contemporary work, it sits in my being for a while. I leave the room open to be inspired by life, texture, colour, animate or inanimate things. I make notes too.”
The challenge, Aditi says, comes post this, to convert the concepts and ideas into a dance. “That is when I collaborate like I did with British dancer Aakash Odedra for a work called Mehek, which was a love story between an older woman and a younger man.” Aditi was nominated in the category of outstanding performance (classical) by the National Dance Critics Circle Award, (United Kingdom) 2017 for Mehek.
As powerful as she is on stage as a dancer, so Aditi is in life, using dance to question patriarchy and other social issues. “Patriarchy at times is inherent in the dance form itself. We have something called ched-chad, which basically translates to ‘no means yes’. For years, I must confess I was dancing without realising what was the message I was giving out through dance. I saw great gurus and performers dance this and was enchanted by how beautifully it was performed.”
Aditi says her mind did not dwell on the message that was given out. “One day I woke up and found it strange. Since then, I have, vigorously and rigorously, tried to make sure that this kind of patriarchy, inherent in structures and traditions, does not come through in my classical works.”
Female sexual desire is one of the things one is moved by, Aditi says. “Why is it that women have been sanctioned control, compartmentalised and eventually punished for having the courage to own their sexual desire?” Aditi has created contemporary works based on Kathak titled Forbidden and Within . The latter, she says, “is a result of the Nirbhaya rape.
“I could no longer talk about a beautiful relationship between a man and woman when something much darker and awful was happening. So we removed gender from dance and it became a work that talks of humanity and brutality that exists within each of us. When we say a rude word to someone who cannot retaliate, that is a violent act from within. If we find a mirror that reflects who we actually are and accept the brutality within us and tackle it, humanity will come through.”
Aditi has also has choreographed a dance titled Weeping Red, for a solidarity event.“Itis based on a poem called Gaza by Sudeep Sen and the late Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer. It is a cry at how we look at children being massacred in any conflict in the world, regardless of religion, ethnicity, geography, history.”
Insisting she is not an activist, Aditi says, “I do not carry a flag around, nor do I have answers. My only medium is dance and I hope art can eventually bring the viewer closer to their humanity and question themselves, which may bring about a transformation at some point.”
Immersed will be performed in Bengaluru on September 28 at 7.30 pm at Jagriti Theatre. It is open to anyone aged eight years and above. Tickets on BookMyShow.
Published – September 24, 2024 07:09 am IST
