Straddling two worlds with panache
ANJANA RAJAN
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Ananda Shankar Jayanth has not allowed career and passion to intrude on each other. Result? Success at both ends.
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ACHIEVER: Ananda Shankar Jayanth.
If achievers have a typical profile, it must resemble Ananda Shankar Jayanth, who received Sri Krishna Gana Sabha's Nritya Choodamani award this season. Trained in Bharatanatyam at Kalakshetra during the 1970s, when Guru Rukmini Devi Arundale was in complete command of the institution, Ananda's approach was different from that of her fellow disciples. At a time when Kalakshetra taught dance as a devotional path rather than a performing art, when students accepted that one lifetime was not enough to become a good dancer, she was practical enough to wonder about the economic feasibility of dance as a career.
Ananda's calculations led her to pursue her academic studies alongside Kalakshetra's demanding schedule. Ananda joined the institution as a full-time student of Bharatanatyam at the age of 11. She refers to it as "some craziness in me," but there was a method in the madness. "I thought, I must be a graduate, because even then I was unclear whether dance was a paying career."
When she left Kalakshetra in 1979, she set up her own school, niftily calling it Shankarananda Kalakshetra. Plunging into teaching and performing, she also completed her Masters in Ancient Indian History with a gold medal, besides an M.Phil, whose topic was Development of Bharatanatyam: Role of Kalakshetra, where she "looked at how Rukmini Devi approached the whole style, how it came to be called the Kalakshetra style and how her dance dramas turned from innovation to tradition."
Ananda qualified for the Indian Railway Traffic Service in the 1987 batch. Even as she explored the boundaries of her classical training with productions like "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" — it wasn't common then to base a dance drama on an English story - Ananda found she had "burst through this male bastion" as the first woman in the South Central Service. Finding juniors addressing her as "sir" was one extreme. Her first experience of a Divisional Railway Managers' Inspection was another. There was "a whole baraat of officers," and since they were required to physically inspect the tracks, Ananda arrived in jeans, cap and T-shirt. Her colleagues were convinced she was the daughter of one of the officers on a joyride.
Kuchipudi too
Ananda also performs Kuchipudi, but she took it up as an adult, under Pasumarthy Ramalinga Shastry. "I don't teach Kuchipudi. I only teach Bharatanatyam," she clarifies. While some say Ananda's Bharatanatyam is now influenced by Kuchipudi, others find her Kalakshetra roots loosening.
"All of us bring our own personalities and inputs," counters the dancer. "Finally, what is a style? It is grammar," she reasons.
As for balancing two careers, two dance forms and family life, Ananda says, "I work in drawers. I don't allow one to impinge on the other. My rehearsals are pre- and post-office hours." She also teaches evening and Sunday classes at her institution.
Many women are afflicted by guilt at not being everywhere at once. Ananda says simply, "I don't have that guilt."
Admittedly, she doesn't have to cook for the household. "Today we all have help. I personally recommend to all my young dancers that you must have financial backing."
But a good boss can smooth the balancing act. Ananda acknowledges, "The government has been good to me." Currently on deputation to the Andhra Pradesh Government, she is an Additional Secretary in the Tourism and Culture Department.
What does hassle this feisty lady is the thought that the audience for classical dance is growing steadily older. "I found only the bald and the old in my audience. In 25 years none of us will have an audience." This thought powered her dance theatre production "Dancing Tales... Panchatantra," acclaimed for being witty and entertaining along with classical.
"The youngsters would rather be in a pub (than a classical dance performance)." Her attempt is to "invite them in to watch it as a secular, `fun' work," and while she has "nothing against discos," she suggests, "This is something you might also like to see."
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