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Chandralekha The Rebellion and Innovative

Chennai, Dec 31 (IANS) With acclaimed dancer and choreographer Chandralekha's passing away in Chennai Sunday, an era of rebellion and innovation in Bharatnatyam has come to an end. She died in the early hours Sunday at her residence here after battling with cancer.

Chandralekha was born in 1929 in a Gujarati family and was brought up in Sausrashtra, Aden and Mumbai. At 17, she moved here to make Madras (now Chennai) her home - to be a better dancer and learn more about dancing, she once said.

Harindranath Chattopadhyay and Kancheevaram Ellappa Pillai were her gurus. She was also deeply influenced by Balasarswathi and Rukmini Devi Arundale.

She began her career in the 1950s as a traditional dancer.

Her arangetram, or first public performance, was as a charity show to collect funds for relief after a natural disaster. She was dancing the ritual dance 'Mathura Nagarilo', a performance supposedly taking place on the banks of the river Yamuna, when in her mind's eye she saw the earth opening and swallowing up victims, she told her biographers later.

This contradiction between reality and art influenced her work greatly.

She often rejected the devotional elements of dance and chose to display body-oriented movements, choreographing passion. Critics called her "iconoclastic, maverick, a dancer who fused Bharatanatyam, Yoga and Kalarippayat (a martial art form of Kerala)."

Chandralekha soon emerged as one of the most controversial Indian dancers and choreographers.

While the classical platform in India, being very conservative, often found her innovations and experiments offensive, Chandralekha won acclaims abroad.

Her dances do not use the classical Bharatnatyam make-up and the performers are dressed simply. They do not make the ritual prayer before the performance and adopt styles she developed working with European dancers like Pina Bausch and Susanne Linke.

"Interactions between women and men play an important role in her work," noted an art historian, adding that, "in transforming an old tradition she has been in search of the roots of womanliness".

In the 1960s, she gave up performing and chose to become a writer and a woman's and human rights activist for 12 years and turned to writing poetry.

Participating in an East-West encounter of Indian and European dancers in the Max Mueller Bhavan in Mumbai in 1984 proved to be a turning point for her as choreographer.

A year later she produced 'Angika'. It is now said to have been a milestone in the history of Indian dance, as it fused classical Bharanatyam with Kalarippayyat.

Chandralekha was always in search of the female and male energy and called her performances "celebrations of the human body", which brought her the reputation of being a radical.

Her work 'Sri', on the theme of equal rights for Indian women, was shown in the House of World Cultures in Berlin in 1992 during the Indian Festival.

'Yantra' (1995) brings out the essence of Chandralekha's notion of dancing: "It's a piece about sexuality, sensuality, spirituality and the female principles of our culture," she told a critic.

For the Hamburg Festival in 1999, Chandralekha developed a meditative dance-poem about the continual renewal of energy in the human body. In this dance, she broke another taboo of Bharatnatyam, with two male dancers embracing each other affectionately.

Chandralekha was honored with the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award and the Kalidas Samman. Her international recognitions include the Italian Gaia Award in 1992 and the Time Out Dance Umbrella Award in 1992 of London.

Chandralekha, a legend loved and hated, lived life on her own terms, with companion and critic Sadanand Menon.   

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