Gandhi - Warp and Weft
The father of the nation, Mahatma Gandhi, is a much written about
and explored personality in Indian history. So, a charpoy on the stage, as a
prop with clothes hanging on it, raised your curiosity about how Geeta was
going to portray key concepts from Gandhian philosophy.
On August 17th,
bharatnatyam dancer Padmashree Geeta Chandran premiered her new abstract dance
composition, ‘Gandhi – Warp and Weft’ at the newly opened JNU Convention
Centre. The performance depicted Gandhi’s ideology through narrated gestures.
It incorporated both, classical bharatnatyam and contemporary theatre. About
the concept and its visualization, Geeta had said, “This is not a docu-drama or
anything. It is very much a contemporary Indian woman dancer revisiting the
vision of Gandhi. In that sense it is me and Gandhi. It meant a lot of reading,
and there was so much information that the task of developing the concept was
daunting. How to begin? How to take it forward? What medium to use? Gandhi is
not somebody that you can portray in an hour. I wanted to say so much more and
that is why there is so much layering. And then the ideologies had to be
communicated with conviction. We narrowed down to six segments from his life.
To portray them, we made use of props and a musical score. As we went on,
concepts kept evolving. We wanted to make talking about things like scavenging
and caste relevant to the present times as well. We are using 21st century
bharatnatyam to talk about these issues, so we cannot portray them to be
historical subjects. I wanted to make it as much a commentary today as it was
for Gandhi’s time.”
The first segment was about
religion and secularism. Gandhi, though a devout Hindu, had total respect for
all religions. To portray this, Geeta started by enacting a puja, making
chandan, garland and arti. Then came a bhajan which resonated the mood, ‘Ram
Ram Jai Raja Ram, Ram Ram Jai Sita Ram’, revisiting the various incidents in
the life of Lord Rama. And then suddenly you heard the sound of Quran being
recited. Geeta enacted this piece by opening different windows with different
chants coming from each. The following song - ‘Jo khuda masjid basat hai’ –
conveyed the secular message. The concluding line – ‘Dil hi mein basat, so guru
peer hamara’- summed it up.
The second section took us to
Gandhi’s experiments with celibacy and renunciation. Geeta chose to portray
this by using ‘shringar rasa’ initially. The coy bride is thinking of her
lover, of the romance and the embrace. ‘Piya ki nazariya jadoo bhari, moh liyo
mann mero prem bhari’. But during the actual ‘milan’ or embrace, she gets pangs
of ‘virakti’ or detachment. She comes to her lover and turns around again and
again. This is where Geeta did a costume change. She was wearing a white dress
with a red and orange border. She changed into a white costume with blue and
grey border and took off her ornaments. The costume change obviously
symbolizing the shunning of passion. Celibacy is an abstract concept and Geeta
used a cloth tied to both her wrists, the tying and untying movement showing
the turmoil within: and the stretching denoting testing of one’s will power to
abstain. Subsequently she went on to show Gandhi’s puritan lifestyle of reading
and writing from the prison.
The third theme of the choreography
engages with epochal protests and movements like the dandi march. Geeta
depicted people of all ages and types walking for the march with a resolve and
then being beaten up. It was an old lady or a mother with a child or a young man
with the fire to fight in him, walking up and then being pushed away. The next
aspect of ideology that was explored was ‘Ahimsa’. The background notes were
given by Geeta herself. The dance involved movements of being jostled,
manhandled and turning the other cheek as a mark of non-violence. ‘Satyagraha’
was shown by overturned plates. Geeta would sit in front of the plate, turn it
over, grip her stomach and roll over.
The fifth section of the dance
looks at caste and ‘shram’. For this section, Geeta changed her costume and
wore a completely white dress, showing utter poverty. She swept the floor as if
cleaning night soil and carrying it on her head. The extracts from different
documentaries resonated in the auditorium urging for reforms for the dalits.
In the concluding section, Geeta
emphasized the use of spinning khadi and cloth making processes as a metaphor
for ecological sustainability. Gandhi used khadi as a weapon to shun the import
of cloth and promoting self-sufficiency within the nation. Geeta portrayed
seeds sown, plants bearing flowers and then the yarn being spun on the
‘charkha’. This yarn became the bond that united the whole country. And then
came the part that hit you the hardest. Geeta kept stepping on the yarn drawing
a line symbolizing the division of India. It was a big dilemma for Gandhi, who
did not know where to put his feet. Then Geeta tied the yarn to her toes as in
death, before portraying the shot that killed him. The last scene is Geeta
sitting and pondering, and then she lights a ‘diya’. The ‘diya’ symbolized the
flickering hope that Gandhi’s ideology still provides in the 21st century independent India.
Said Geeta, “In the last part,
where a line is drawn to show the partition and Gandhi’s dilemma, we wanted the
audience to catch on themselves. We did not explain it beforehand. The aam
janta is very intelligent. They do not need any spoonfeeding. Some people are
very fond of drawing lines. Like this is bharatnatyam. Like this is theatre.
This is contemporary. I did not want to draw any lines on what has to be used
where as long as the message is conveyed. I did not want to use too many props
either. I am a person who tries to convey more through movement and dance. But
still I did not draw any rigid lines. The plates were used to show satyagraha.
We wanted to use yarn as a prop since it is associated with Gandhi.”
The sound score by Pratik Biswas
featuring Ojesh Pratap Singh, K Venkateshwaran, Thanjavoor Keshavan and Geeta
Chandran was commendable. The costumes were designed by Sandhya Raman. Deepa
Dharmadhikari co-choreographed the performance with Geeta and also did the
lighting design.
About the difficulty of doing this production,
a novelty and a departure from her usual work, Geeta said, “Soundscapes also
took up a lot of energy. At places we have used natural sounds. Different
segments were recorded separately. For the scavenging part, we wanted the
vocals to be more powerful and prominent. We watched 60 to 70 documentaries and
went through the tedious task of picking up content that conveyed the message.
We kept movement to a minimum. It was an effort to bring out the drudgery and
not divert the audience from that. Next, it was the issue of costume change. We
thought that going off the stage would take away the element of continuity.
Then we thought we would do it on the stage with a sense of purpose. But that
seemed too much for the sensibilities of Indian audience. We had to put
something that would that would provide a cover for the costume change. The
options were a Gandhi sketch or something made of bamboo or a charpoy. The last
one was our choice since it was minimalist." I think the charpoy represented
the theme warp and weft.
When asked which ideology resonated
the most with her, she said, “It was very disturbing to watch documentaries on
manual scavenging. I threw up a few times and could not eat for a day or two
when we were researching and rehearsing. It is a totally inhuman practice which
should be discontinued in the so called ‘modern’ India. Even amongst the
dalits, it is the lowest of them who are working as scavengers. People who can
make a difference are not ready to do anything about it.”
Very interesting. I really wish I had got chance to see this performance. I think Ms Chandran should also travel to the south more frequently so that the viewers here get to see such works.
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