Tradition and Transition“传统与变革”.docVIP

What is tradition in a country with a history of 5000 unbroken years? If 5000 sounds pompous, although historically established since the days of the Dancing Girl of Mohenjo Daro found circa 2500 BC, let us be modest and put tradition at a humble 2000 years from when we have detailed text on dramaturgy, the 燦atyasastraand later on other texts like Abhinaya 燚arpana 燼nd Sangeet Ratnakara.? ?All alien words not merely to foreign audiences but Indian too! Independent India, a mere fifty years plus, has striven hard to re-establish some of the links to the traditional past. What is that in terms of dance traditions???Take Bharatanatyam from earthe South Indian State of Tamil Nadu today, on the east coast (not to be mistaken for Kathakali dance-drama of Kerala also of south India but the west coast). Direct records show its most recent incarnation for performance mode as being devised by four brothers collectively called the Tanjore Quartet, who served the Maratha rulers of Tanjore in the 18th century. ?These four illustrious brothers (no need to bother you with their tongue-twisting names, but if you must, they are: Chinniah, Ponniah, Sivananda and Vadivellu) devised what we commonly call a margam format of Bharatanatyam in practice even today. It is a set of seven items, with an invocatory and concluding number. So this was Bharatanatyam, devised in court, 200 years ago, arising from a tradition of temple-dancers, called devadasis. ?The temples were the preserve of classical arts till the arrival of Colonists whose dispensation, by definition, changed the rules of patronage. First, the royalty was affected which in turn affected the fortunes of local landowners who supported temples and later, over a period of time, the very climate for indigenous arts changed. This is not to say that all the Colonists did was in poor taste but that they had little taste for dance dubbing it nautch and equating it with the dance of the fallen women. ?While it is easy to blame all i