Should the Stage Banish the Aged?

Isn't there an age when a dancer ought to retire gracefully?

Total darkness. We are led carefully to seats; glass of red wine in hand. Intimate audience – 12 people. Dancer Australian - in her late 50s. Theme - self-exploration. Subtle movements, stunning yet sensitive lighting. Darkness again. Our seats are moving forward. Lights come on - we are almost inside performance space. Dancer is now in state of semi-nudity; continues to explore body and self. Suddenly becomes aware of outsiders’ presence. Shock, embarrassment, vulnerability. Darkness. Seats move backwards; back to where we began.

The 18-minute piece, part of the Singapore Arts Festival, was the shortest performance I had ever attended but it left me thinking. Ultimately age is not a barrier to being on stage. In fact, being ‘old’ is a prerequisite to performing such a piece. In such work it is concept, experience in life and subtle portrayal that overrides all else; a younger dancer could not have depicted with such sensitivity what I had just witnessed.

Stocky bald old man, clad in simple white dhoti. Radha, hands stretched over her head asking Krishna to touch her breasts. Most erotic, convincing and moving portrayal of Radha ever. Now I am watching Krishna dancing, not Kelu Babu.

The same man, Kelucharan Mohapatra, could portray both man and woman characters so convincingly that that day I understood dance can transcend not only age but even gender.

Yet recently a sabha secretary in Chennai lamented that older dancers kept expecting performance slots during the December season. A journalist friend asked me why there is no age bar when it comes to our dance forms. Isn’t there an age when a dancer ought to retire gracefully?

I don’t believe there is. Unless of course the older dancer is trying to do exactly what he or she did at age 25, without moving into more honest portrayals; without bringing the wisdom and experience of life into art. For while it is through the body that dance happens, true aesthetic experience is provided by something beyond the physical. Truly experiencing the dance requires a separation of the dancer from the dance and the idea that is being conveyed. In our culture men seem able to transcend this dancer-dance boundary more effectively. Two other examples are Birju Maharaj and Ammanur Madhava Chakyar.

Women of Indian dance are more prone to objectification. In Bharatanatyam this can be seen very clearly in the costumes and heavy ornaments that women dancers have been made to wear and the themes that they have been taught to portray. However much one tries to view all these aspects of the form as a means of communicating with the Ultimate, how can one ignore the Male Gaze given the history of the dance. God was male, so were the priests, kings, gurus, musicians, tailors, make up artists and sabha secretaries! The very reason that our centre stage is dominated by women is due to Male Gaze and for the same reason the pleasure machines called women grow too old and ugly while men remain eternally young! Sadly there is no female gaze.

Carlo Suarez’s documentary films show that Flamenco dance is often performed very gracefully by bulky old women. On my visits to Bali I have watched 75-year old women dancing in temples. Even in Kabuki and Noh older women perform for it is believed that with age they mature and their technique improves. In the west Pina Bausch, Susanne Linke and Martha Graham are examples of solo women dancers who danced beyond the externally imposed boundaries of age. All these dancers have observed minimalisation in costume and ornamentation. Their dance has been entirely devoted to body, movement and a moving inward. In India we had Balasaraswati who aged so gracefully on stage. An understated approach draws attention to the dance rather than the dancer. Otherwise it tends to be a vulgar exhibition of colour, ornamentation and wealth. A leading international artist who had just seen a picture of heavily ornamented Indian dancers laughed as he said to me, “They don’t know where to stop, do they!”

With lack of sensitive patronage from society and support from the state in a capitalistic world our dance has become tightly linked with the world of commerce, advertising and media all of which are linked ultimately to the idea of Male Gaze. In a society that is flooded with self-styled experts, where art criticism is still at a nascent stage and the creation of sacred cows is an unquestioned aspect of culture, it is virtually impossible to separate the dancer from the dance. Who takes centre stage becomes more important than the work that is being presented. And so there is no real incentive to reinvent and redefine until the female dancer wakes up one day and feels that her position on centre stage might be threatened. Even the intrinsic process of reinventing oneself is dictated by external pressures.

Yet dance forms of the east have always had the tools to go inward. Our very definition of dance has been different right from the beginning. Ours is not a conquest of space but using space to go inward. One part of our dance doesn’t even require so much body movement. Our dance forms are becoming more acrobatic because we have borrowed indiscriminately from the west. With age this prancing around on stage becomes more and more difficult to do. But by this time the audience has been conditioned to equate acrobatics and entertainment with excellence. And the sabhas are on the lookout for younger acrobats!

To quote modern dancer, choreographer and critic Martin David, “A young dancer may be able to leap her own height or touch his toe to his ear. An older dancer may be able to conjure worlds beyond the realm of daily experience, simply by standing on stage and raising an arm. A younger dancer may be able to put his or her soul into the work, but an older dancer's soul is the work.”

In the world of dance every age brings its unique and individual insights to the art form. There is no need to eulogize the one and neglect the other. The canvas is a large one on which there is place for the vigour of the young and wisdom of the old to co-exist. As one ages it is a gradual shift in emphasis from the outward to the inward. A combination of the physical excellence of the younger dancer with the mellowed wisdom and maturity of the older dancer provides a fuller artistic experience. Old or young, the final criterion depends upon the merit of the dancer. As one grows older it is about redefining and reinventing oneself as an artist. Ultimately it is the separation of the dance from the dancer and doing whatever it takes to arrive at that. Everything else is incidental.

NIRMALA SESHADRI

Note: The article was published in The Hindu, Sunday magazine, on 25/2/2007.