Thanks to the groovy globalism of such sixties culture
mavens as George Harrison and Yehudi Menuhin, pretty much everyone has heard of
Ravi Shankar, the classical sitar virtuoso and composer, who passed away in
2012. His life, with its jet-setting, its string of beautiful and accomplished
women, and its Zelig-like confluence with the major cultural events of world
pop-culture in the sixties and seventies would make a brilliant biopic. But at
one time Ravi was just a dancer and musician in the internationally recognized touring
troupe of his older brother, Uday.
I first learned of Uday Shankar from a book of Gordon Anthony
photographs called Dancers to Remember
(Rizzoli, 1980) that must have been a birthday present back in my baby bunhead
days. At twelve, I thought that these older, black-and-white photos of
pre-war primas and heavily made up demi-character danseurs were a bit embarrassing.
I do not recall seriously perusing the photos at that time, but several years ago
my mother sent me a box of my old papers and books and I found this in the mix. On page
115 there is a gorgeous, full-page reproduction of a photograph of Uday and a
dancer named Simkie (more on her rather unusual story here) posed in what seems to be a classical
Indian dance tableau.
Against a deep, velvety black ground, the two dancers appear
nearly at the front of the frame, a strong, silvery spotlight on the left of
the picture giving his right arm, face, and torso the stark,
illuminated-from-within quality of Caravaggio’s David. The above print of the photo is from the website of the V&A in
London.
The costuming and the pose suggest that the dancers are
enacting the classical Indian motif of Radha-Krishna; the divine
masculine/feminine conjoined in dance. It really does capture that distinctive
pairing of soft/sinuous with rooted/angular that characterizes classical
depictions of Krishna and his cow-herd girls.
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| Temple sculpture, Khajuraho group of monuments, Mattar Pradesh, 10th-12th century |
The photo dates to 1937, when Shankar was touring with his
troupe of dancers and musicians, but it could almost be a publicity shot for Kalpana, the 1948 film/manifesto that he
wrote, directed, and starred in. The title means “Imagination.” The film was
not a huge success, and was in fact lost for many decades, only restored in
2010 and very hard to come by. Still and all, it is frequently described as the
ur-point for the Bollywood musical. A synopsis from the British Film Institute
describes it thus:
Drama filmed as a ballet and based on Uday Shankar's own
experiences as he set up the Almora dance centre in the Himalayas and is caught
up between two women - Kamini and Uma. Shankar wrote, directed, and starred in
this drama. A writer goes to a film producer with a story in the hope of
selling the idea for a film. As he is explaining it to the producer, the scenes
from his movie come to life as well as passages from his own life. Reality and
the surreal are combined throughout the story. When the producer refuses to
back his movie, the writer makes a passionate plea for Indian filmmakers to
break with tradition and take on new cinematic challenges.
So avant-garde for 1948! I love it. It also seems to
be in keeping with Uday Shankar’s commitment to making Indian fine arts as
contemporary and relevant as the classical art forms of Europe were struggling
to be in the face of the rise of cinema. How do you take these beautiful but
antique forms and reinvent them for a new eye, that of the film camera, the eye
of modernity?
Uday Shankar was not, in fact, a classically trained Indian
dancer in any one of the eight forms that are recognized as “classical Indian
dance.” When he began his performance career in London in 1920 he was actually an
art student. But he was certainly familiar with the movement vocabulary of
Indian dance, both folk and classical, and clearly the family had showbiz in
its veins (dad was a small-time impresario). In one of those “only in the life
of an artist” moments, his name came to the attention of
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| Shankar and Pavlova in "Radha-Krishna" |
Better perhaps, to process the Pavlova/Shankar collaboration
in terms of dance itself. What would this jazz-age spin on Indian mythic narrative dance, filtered
through the partially-anglicized sensibilities of an upper-crust Rajasthani and
a Russian ballerina look like? How would it move? Though there are a few film
clips of Shankar’s later performances with his own troupe of dancers and
musicians (the first clip in this article from the Guardian is absolutely
delightful, with Ravi Shankar narrating and the fourth generation of Shankars
looking on http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/oct/07/anna-pavlova-uday-shankar-dance-movetube)
, there does not seem to be a filmed record of any of the three one-act ballets,
only still photos.
The music might reveal something, but I have been unable to
track down even the name of the composers, far less the scores – several articles
mention that the music was performed by a western-style symphony orchestra, though,
so it will not have been, as it is in the later film clips, Indian sitars,
tablas, etc.
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| Another great photo from the V&A (http://www.vam.ac.uk/users/node/8367) |
Perhaps the best evidence will have to remain these haunting
black-and-white photographs that capture something serious and something
fantastical about the endeavor, a little like the seriously fantastic spirit of
younger brother Ravi’s collaborations with George Harrison and Philip Glass
almost half a century later. Or just maybe some bright young choreographer,
steeped in the new globalism, will probe the archives and make anew the kalpana of Pavlova and Shankar.
Postscript: As with all web-related rabbit holes, this one
took off in unexpected directions. Evidently, around the same time Pavolva and
Shankar collaborated, Martha Graham took up a theme she had first come across
under the guidance of Ruth St. Denis, the Radha-Krishna divine romance, and
because she was teaching at the Eastman School, it was filmed in an early color
technique in 1926. This film has recently been restored and is available online
thanks to the National Film Preservation Foundation. I find it unwatchably
twee, but if you can, enjoy! http://www.filmpreservation.org/dvds-and-books/clips/the-flute-of-krishna-1926.
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