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Entertainment
Quest for the sublime
Theatre, dance and music in an idyllic milieu...
SOMNOLENT ROOMS with uneasy chairs; speakers who cannot let go of the mike; frozen listeners; droning jargons... such are the drowsy images triggered by the term symposium. However, September saw something quite different in ``Into the Sacred Waters". Organised by APPAN (Asia-Pacific Performing Arts Network) and UNESCO, it achieved layered interchange between many performance arts of the Asia Pacific region. Shanta Serbjeet Singh who masterminded the project, had also structured the sessions with imagination and discernment.
Thereason for its success? First, it was a residency symposium bringing some 50 creative people to interact in a remote location 7,000 feet above sea level -- in Banikhet near Dalhousie, Himachal Pradesh. The ``room'' was the open mountain ledge shaped into a small amphitheatre. The stage was a platform set against the tree-trailing cliff. Beyond the stone ledge bordering the semicircle, the ground dropped into a quiet stream, before rising up again into the giant waves of the surrounding Dhaula Dhar range. At such an idyllic spot, music, dance and theatre could not but acquire an otherworldly aura; and spectacular audio-visual effects, with echoes from the hills, and changing lights through the day. Bonfires added to night magic. To see Kutiyattam and Nangiyarkoothu lit by woodfire and brass lamp was nothing short of bewitchment. This was the perfect ambience for probes into the Asian identity as manifested in the arts of different cultures in the continent, with their holistic vision of the cosmos. The opening session ``Traversing the Lotus Path'' explored the spiritual bases of the Asian arts with a straight from the heart conviction. Sharada Ramanathan placed the symposium against the World Trade Centre catastrophe when she said that without moments of surrender to the spiritual, holocausts became inevitable. A moving session was held beside the stream when participants talked about what pravah (flow of water) meant to them at concrete/conscious and abstract/intuitional levels, connecting the currents to the life force of the universe.
Not all the talk sessions were so focussed or intimate. Some digressed into vapidities. But the one on the breath did develop into a metaphysical probe with the shared experiences of Kalari artistes, classical vocalists, dancers and scholars. Naturally, the performances were more captivating.
The symposium offered an opportunity to watch artistes from Japan, China, Korea and Myanmar, ironically less known in our sub-continent than their western counterparts. Prof. Fusao Okamoto, recognised as an "intangible treasure keeper in Japan'' made a rare solo appearance in a magnificent costume to recreate the rigorously traditional and exclusive Noh theatre. Ke Jun, a star from Kunqu Opera in China, had everyone in raptures over his vocal wizardry, and his flamboyant enactment of a bandit fleeing into the deep forest. The most exciting thing about Ke Jun's presence was that not having an interpreter was no bar to his questing spirit. With a pocket book of Chinese-Mandarin-English, he became easily the most popular member of the group.
More modern styles came from Myanmar and Korea. Dr. Sun Ock Lee, secretary-general of APPAN, performed the Zen dance, a form she has innovated and pioneered.
The symposium made you experience yet again the bewildering variety in costume, music, language, poetry, pace, gesture and movement of the arts in India.
The same effect was produced by the music of the subcontinent. Ustad Fahimuddin Dagar's demonstrations on the dhrupad brought out the essence of yogasadhana, a word with connotations from singleminded practice/effort to meditation/achievement, at the root of all traditional art.
Acclaimed singer of lighter forms of music though she is, Sultana Chaudhuri (Bangladesh) rendered the songs of the itinerant Bauls with ardour.
That is how the mystic visions of Lalan Shah and Hasan Raja became poignant reminders that cultural affinities transcend political borders. Says the Sufi mendicant, ``I labour all day, my sufferings do not end, I have earned no grace.''
At the APPAN seminar, discussions and performances proved how worldweariness and grief can be transformed by the arts of Asia into the quest for the sublime. Not in the distant stars, but within every responsive human heart.
GOWRI RAMNARAYAN
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