Traditional art forms are slowly gaining wider recognition in the country but we need more support for the youngsters who want to pursue it as a career, say Kerala-based renowned dancer Daksha Sheth and her musician husband Devissaro.
Daksha Sheth: I was born in a business family in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. We had no involvement with music or dance. I lived in a joint family with 20-25 members and nine other children. My exposure to music was a radio and when any music was played, I would start dancing. I made my own costumes using my mother’s saris. I started learning Kathak from renowned dancer Kumudini Lakhia. My parents thought that my enthusiasm would fade away, but it hasn’t. My family then encouraged me. The only problem happened when I took up dance as a profession. My parents thought that nobody would marry me. But nothing was going to change my mind.
Daksha Sheth: I was always curious about Indian culture and spirituality. That led me to Delhi from Ahmedabad to learn Chhau under guru Krishna Chandra Naik. It opened a new way for me to look at dance. I realised that I needed to strengthen my body. My muscles were trained in a vertical way for Kathak, and for Chhau, I needed to squat. I was practising yoga, but that was not enough. When I saw Kalaripayattu around 1988, I was hooked to it. Devissaro and I came to Kerala and I started training under Gurukkal Govindan Kutty Nair and his son Sathyanarayanan.
Daksha Sheth: I came across Mallakhamb, the aerial performing arts tradition of Maharashtra and Gujarat, in the early 1990s. I saw a demonstration of the practice on the rope and the pole and it blew me away. I requested the teacher to visit Kerala and train me though I was quite old for this training. In 1997, my daughter Isha Sharvani came into the picture and she was absolutely natural at this.
Daksha Sheth: I was laughed at for this. But for me it didn’t matter so long as it was something that captured my heart. Now you see every contemporary dance company doing Kalaripayattu. In 2005, in the Hindi film Kisna, I did the choreography for Isha and from then onwards, it became a trend in movies.
Daksha Sheth: The difference in perception is breaking slowly, mainly due to the tremendous exposure in the media, with people watching so many shows and dance competitions. This kind of change doesn’t happen in one or two years. This outlook will stay to a certain extent. But folk dance is being appreciated more. I hope it continues because it’s so beautiful.
Daksha Sheth: For me, when I learn something, I Iike it to be in its purest form. But you are right, there is a lot of influence coming into our art forms and there is a group of people who want to keep it the way it is, and then there are people who want to mix it. Both have a valid point. I will not say that one is right or wrong. But I want to say that if I want to learn something I would like to learn it the way it was preserved for a long time. And then you can do what you want to do with it without losing its integrity or its deep roots.
Daksha Sheth: People have lost patience today. They do not have time. There are several reasons. One is survival. For me, dance was not for my survival. There was somebody who was supporting my journey – my parents or my husband. So you have to have a support system, some kind of a grant or government institution, to be able to nurture your passion. The Ministry of Culture is doing work in that direction but we need more support for the young generation.
Devissaro: Daksha said that she was first supported by her family and then by her husband. I would have to contradict her on that. When Daksha decided to marry me, I was in India studying music, I didn’t have a regular job. Her family was happy with her studying Kathak under Pandit Birju Maharaj at that time. Then she wanted to learn Chhau, which people thought was crazy. Then she decided to marry this man who had very little money. We were living in Delhi, where the cost of living is so much higher. The things that were exciting Daksha outside of Kathak were rural arts. She went to Mayurbhanj to study Chhau. We had become friends with Protima Bedi and when she got the grant of land from the Karnataka government, she asked Daksha if we would join her in Bangalore. We packed up everything and went to Bangalore. From there we went to Vrindavan where we lived in a haveli for over three years. We got a grant of Rs 750 a month per artiste from the Ministry of Culture.
Daksha started dancing in temples. There was no money involved. Like a rich man may offer money, a poor person may offer a flower to god, in Daksha’s case, it was dance. We had extra rooms and we wished that other artistes would join us to form a group of people who could be together consistently. Art is like osmosis, it has to be imbibed in the body. It doesn’t happen in a two-week workshop. Nobody came to live with us in Vrindavan. But it rounded off Daksha’s Kathak career. From there we went to Kerala.
Devissaro: Yes. We were lucky to be able to buy a small piece of land in a village called Ookode outside Trivandrum. That became our base, and took the form of Natyashram. Daksha could work with village boys who were much stronger than urban dancers. They had incredible tolerance for pain, which is one of the first requirements for aerial dance. We paid them to learn and provided accommodation to them from day one. So the village became a big part of our work.
Devissaro: In Japan, people who are masters of a particular craft are given stipend by the government to preserve the traditions in the purest way they can. I hope that this would happen in India, which is so rich in movement art traditions. They are unique to India. So many handicrafts have been lost in the West. In India, they still survive but they are very fragile. Unless it’s possible for the children of these practitioners to be able to have a reasonably good life, these traditions will also die. But the fact that India is one of the last repositories in the world of traditional skills is an extraordinary advantage. And so much of this culture is not in the cities but in the rural areas.
The lead image shows dancer Daksha Sheth during one of her performances (Photo courtesy Daksha Sheth)
Pallavi Srivastava is Associate Director, Content, at Village Square.
*The article was updated on 08.05.2023 to change the photo caption to say Mayurbhanj Chhau in place of
Pallavi Srivastava is Associate Director, Content, at Village Square.
*The article was updated on 08.05.2023 to change the name of the dance form in the photo caption to Mayurbhanj Chhau from Kalaripayattu and to specify that the Ministry of Culture gave a grant of Rs 750 a month per artiste.
