In the history of dance, we find every now and then a supreme artist who dominates the field for a generation, enriching the existing tradition, providing a corrective to current practices and setting standards for generations to follow. Anna Pavlova was one such artist and so was Vaslav Nijnsky. And today in India Balasaraswati is one.” VK Narayana Menon, in the book Balasaraswati, published by International Culture Centre, New Delhi.
T Balasaraswati was one of the foremost exponents of Bharatanatyam, the major form of classical Indian dance. Hailing from the devadasi community – the torchbearers of Bharatanatyam who were ostracised after the enactment of the Devadasi Dedication Abolition Act of 1947 that held their art to be decadent and immoral – she earned accolades for her mastery of her art from connoisseurs in India and the West.
Tanjavur Balasaraswati was a seventh generation representative of a traditional matrilineal family of musicians and dancers “often described as the greatest single repository of traditional music and dance of south India.” Her ancestor Papammal was a musician and dancer patronised in the mid-eighteenth century by the court of Tanjavur. Kamakshi (1810-1890) danced at the Tanjore court well into her seventies. Her son Apparkkannu, an accomplished violinist and his sister Sundarammal were pupils of Subbaraya Sastri, a great composer of the time.
Bala’s grandmother Vina Dhanammal(1867-1938) the most influential musician of the early twentieth century, was a legendary exponent of the veena, the ancient stringed instrument which represents the essence of Carnatic music. Bala’s mother Jayammal (1890-1967) was a singer who encouraged her dance and provided vocal accompaniment in her concerts.Dhanammal and her sister Rupavati both performed as dancers for some time; so did Jayammal and almost every other member of the family, providing inspiration for composers and teachers of the dance form. Balasaraswati was thus born on 13 May 1918 into a treasure house of the Carnatic tradition. Music and dance were in her very blood. She started learning Bharatanatyam when she was four, under K Kandappa Pillai, an eminent Tanjavur nattuvanar (roughly translated as conductor). Both her younger brothers became celebrated musicians who migrated to the United States in the 1960s.T Ranganathan played and taught the mridangam, the south Indian drum, and T Viswanathan the flute, at the Wesleyan University in Connecticut, NY.
Balasaraswati’s dance arangetram or debut took place in 1925, when she was barely seven, at the Ammanakshi Amman temple at Kanchipuram, in Tamil Nadu.
It was at the height of the anti-nautch movement, the precursor of the abolition of the devadasi tradition of dedicating young women from traditional matrilineal dance families to the local temple. Little did young Bala know then that she would one day along with people like Rukmini Devi Arundale and E Krishna Iyer, play a key role in the revival of bharatanatyam.
The great Carnatic vocalist Kanchipuram Nayana Pillai was present at the arangetram. Bala showed no signs of nervousness in front of an enormous crowd. She “astonished those present with the exactitude of her rhythm and the precision of her movements.”
Though she was soon a popular draw, the Devadasi Abolition Act made it difficult for her to perform, but with staunch support from Jayammal, Balasaraswati withstood all the trials and tribulations of her life, committed to the preservation of a great and ancient tradition.
Bala received numerous awards in India, including the President’s Award from the Sangeet Natak Akademi (1955), Padma Vibhushan from the Government of India for distinguished national service (1977) and Sangita Kalanidhi from the Madras Music Academy, South India’s highest award for musicians (1973).
She was the only non-western dancer included in a compilation of the Dance Heritage Coalition. She was the fi rst performer of Bharatanatyam outside of south India, performing fi rst in Calcutta in 1934. She went on to a global career that attracted international critical attention and the respect of dance greats such as Shambhu Maharaj, Dame Margot Fonteyn, Martha Graham, and Merce Cunningham. The New York Times dance critic Anna Kisselgoff described Balasaraswati in a review in 1977 as one of the “supreme performing artists in the world”.
“Balasaraswati made the public Bharatanatyam conscious, not by conscious efforts as a torch-bearer or a reformer but by the beauty and eloquence of her dancing. It was left to others to fi ght prejudices and stupidity, do research, delve into the past. But Balasaraswati made us aware of the living miracle of Bharatanatyam to be seen and to be enraptured.”(Menon)
Devadasis and the banning of nautch
The Devadasi Dedication Abolition Act of 1947 put an end to the practice of dedicating young dancers from the Devadasi community to temples, as in the view of the British government and others who had fought for many years to ban what they termed as nautch (Hindi for dance, but used in a derogatory sense), it was an immoral practice that had descended from its original divine purpose into prostitution.
Bharatanatyam
Bharatanatyam (literally the dance of Bharata – the author of Natya Sastra or the Science of Dance – in Sanskrit) is a classical dance form of southern India, whose essence is refi nement. Pure dance movements founded on basic dance steps that can be woven into various rhythmic patterns combine with a variety of scientifi cally structured facial expressions and hand gestures go to form a Bharatanatyam performance, which is accompanied by a musical ensemble and a dance conductor. The ensemble performs songs usually based on Indian mythology and epics, often the story of Krishna. While primarily a solo art performed mostly by women artists supervised and conducted by their gurus or in their absence other nattuvanars, Bharatanatyam can also feature dance dramas that usually depict classics like the Ramayana, Mahabharata and other mythological themes. The nine rasas or emotions defi ned in the natya sastra texts of yore are a highlight of Indian dance.