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Who Remembers Uday Shankar?
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| Uday Shankar was photographed by Lipnitzki in Paris in the 1920's. (Collection of Amala Shankar, Calcutta) |
Middle-aged, relaxed, and so knowledgeable in his field that he had written several books (in Hindi) about Rajasthani theatre and puppetry, Devilal Samar leaned back in his desk chair as I interviewed him. Wondering how he had come to found his unique institution, I asked him whether anyone in his family had an interest in the arts. He said, “No, they are all businessmen.”
“Then how,” I asked, “did you come to take performing arts as your profession?”
“Well, I studied music from age 16 or 17, but when I was at Almora, Dada taught me to be creative.”
“Who is Dada?” I asked innocently. For though I had spent three years of the last thirteen living in India, I didn’t know who he was talking about.
“Dada!! Uday Shankar, of course,” he replied.
Devilal Samar then told me about Uday Shankar’s career, beginning with his birth in Udaipur, dancing with Pavlova, years in Europe with his dance company, and Simkie, his French partner. Eventually Samar came to tell me of the Uday Shankar India Culture Centre at Almora, in the foothills of the Himalayas, where he had studied. Referring to Uday Shankar’s company he said, “It was the first troupe.” Through this company “Uday Shankar has given a new horizon to Indian dance. His technique is a form in itself.” I found out that Uday Shankar was living in Calcutta, and Samar described him as old and paralyzed (a false rumor, as it turned out). During my dissertation research in Jaipur in 1977, I learned that he had died in Calcutta.
When I returned to Chicago, I searched for a biography or memoir of Shankar, so I could find out more about his career in dance. But there was none. Eventually I reached original materials in the Indian arts journal, Roopa-Lekha, and other publications about Uday Shankar during the peak of his career in the 1930s. And I was amazed at what I read.
UDAY SHANKAR was a big name, a star! He had received rave reviews in Paris and New York, London and Calcutta. His photos showed a stage presence and an aesthetic which was still appealing, and his dance repertoire was extensive and progressive. Why, I asked myself, did no one talk of Shankar in India today? Wasn’t he the forerunner of India’s great dance renaissance in the 1930s? Why did one of Delhi’s major presenters claim that her ballets owed nothing to Shankar, when it was clear to me that they did? Why did people say that Shankar didn’t know dance, that he had never been trained in dance? How could he have been so successful and so untrained at the same time?
When I completed my Ph.D. in 1980, I decided to take up the questions which had been provoking me about Uday Shankar. My research has since then spanned twenty years. During this time I have considered some major aspects of Shankar’s life and career in work I presented and published, such as his ‘translation’ of dance for western audiences, the women in his life—his major patrons, his authenticity, and his impact on audiences in India and the west. Each issue contributes to the making of Shankar’s biography.
But a biography needs more than issues, it needs the continuity of a narrative, which may not follow a strict chronology if the material suggests otherwise. My recently completed memoir of Zohra Segal, now an acclaimed actress but formerly a leading dancer in Uday Shankar’s company, had led me to think about how life journeys have critical turning points, such as leaving one’s homeland, or rebelling against expectations. For Shankar one turning point that changed his life was setting out from India as a 20-year-old art student in 1920. Unlike the Segal book, however, which is a co-written memoir, the book on Shankar is my own account: a critical view of what he wrought and the contexts in which he succeeded and failed, and his impact on contemporary as well as continuing dance in India. So two major considerations in writing of Uday Shankar are the impact of this Indian choreographer and dancer on his times, and the significance of his life and works for our times.