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Dances of India
From Hindustani to Carnatic
The minute we got into a studio with the musicians, things began to change rapidly. The gentle flow of music I had heard on the tape of a radio broadcast of Pani, now began to gather the wonderful tension and attack of modern flamenco music and dance. Rhythmic combinations would end with a sharp freeze, followed by silence for a couple of beats, only to soon resume their urgency. Next thing I knew, my body began to execute the strong sharp lines of Bharatanatyam adavus. My feet began to stamp with the force of the south Indian dance form, as I learnt to end, not on our sam (which would be their beat 12) but on beat 10 Taam _ ta kita, tei _dhi nata, taka dhiku, kitataka tarikita, tom …! Then Pedro asked me to sing something to the melody being played by his guitar. At first I looked for a Hindi poem, a ghazal or something similar, thinking still in terms of north India, and the Hindi word 'pani'. But then he asked me to beat foot rhythms while I sang (thought I can hold a tune, I am NOT an inspired singer!). So the most natural outcome was a tillana-like sequence to complement the teermanam I had devised for that fragment of melody: "tanana dheem dheem dheem, tana dhirana . . ." Conja had asked me to include some abhinaya, even though the song had no words per se. Again, I first turned to gentle undulating movements which would suggest water, clouds, drops of rain, drawing from the Odissi hand-gesture vocabulary. But as the music became more compelling, I began to get images of Shiva as Gangadhar, of torrents of water falling into his jata, of thunder and lightning. The hasta became more defined, as fingers started to stretch, and the body took on the symmetry and angularity of Chola sculpture, as opposed to the typical bhnagis of the Oriya art form. The Duet
The duet had come alive in the studio over several weeks. As a way to start, Conja would choreographed her own movements to the complex rhythms, inspired by Indian tihais, which Pedro had written. I would then 'translate' her flamenco movements into sequences using elements from Bharatanatyam adavus. As we worked we explored designs made by our two bodies in space, not excluding the obvious images of a single body with multiple arms, or Conja raising her legs in a Nataraja-like pose, as suggested by Indian sculpture. Soon, however, we moved on from such clichés. We began to play off each other's traditions, covering larger areas of space and creating tensions between our bodies as well as melting body images together. Conja would clap out a rhythm, I would respond with an adavu (Bharatanatyam step) where the foot patterns complemented her sounds; I would lunge into a full mandi ('sitting') position, Conja would do a spiral turn; her lightning-fast feet articulated the rhythm of a guitar falseta (melodic variation), I performed a teermanam. Then, instead of the typical sawal-jawab ('question- answer') format, we started to dance simultaneously. We circled each other like tigresses from different continents, stood back to back as the lights threw shadows on the scrim, and occasionally even danced in unison. In her ruffled skirts she was a wild flamenca, full of passion and a yang energy, while I, dressed in a black and flame red Bharatanatyam trouser-like costume, looked relatively yin and shanta (tranquil). At the end, however, in typical Flamenco fashion, we built up the rhythm, ending in a fast-paced and brilliant teermanam which I spoke while she did her extraordinary footwork, ending together in a flourish from our respective traditions. |
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The
idea of 'Flamenco Natyam' started very simply. During a trip to
New York in 1997, my friend and flamenco dance teacher, La Conja,
asked me if I would choreograph Indian movements to a piece of music
written by her musical director, the composer-guitarist Pedro Cortes,
Jr. - PANI, a duet for sitar and flamenco
guitar. She suggested that the first part of the musical
suite, an alegrias, could be done as a solo by me, and the
second, a solea por bulerias would be a duet between Conja and
myself. Her intention was to feature this collaboration
during her annual New York concert. 
Written
in homage to his Indian ancestry, Pani (which means 'water' in
Calo, the language of the Spanish Gypsies, as well as in Hindi) includes
many tabla rhythms. So for my initial movement patterns I turned
to Odissi, thinking that there would be more similarity between the
tabla patterns and those of the pakhawaj which accompanies
Odissi. The footwork of Odissi, too, is more conducive to the
rippling rhythms of north-Indian music - tin tarikita taka, tak
tarikita taka, or tak taathin taka dhaatin - and the continual
flow of hand movements with encircling of wrists is similar to the brazeo
arm and hand movements of classical flamenco.
After
an interlude, during which Conja first had me 'rap' with sollu
(syllables of Bharatanatyam rhythm), then did a duet between her feet
and the tabla, after which both of us did non-rhythmic movements
to sitar and guitar solos respectively, we came to the highlight
of Pani - the duet between Conja and myself. 