Uday Shankar, continued
In the 1930s the advent of a Male Oriental Dancer was quite a revelation. Suddenly there was an exotic oriental dark (but not too dark) dancer, who appealed to women. In the 1930s, while touring Uday Shankar and his company in the United States, Russian impresario Sol Hurok noted that Shankar’s audiences were filled with women, who adored him. And, in turn, Uday adored women, who offered themselves to him frequently and openly. Shankar’s major patrons were women, not surprisingly. His company, until 1935, had no other male dancers with his impact, until he brought in Madhavan, trained in the south Indian dance-drama form of Kathakali, to create and present his own solos as a tribal or warrior. But Shankar remained the sole male form of the divine, the god, on stage, in his productions.
In the realm of European and American images of the exotic oriental, Shankar’s appearance on the Paris dance scene in the 1930s, and his huge success in France and Germany, as well as America, paralleled a fascination with Eastern spirituality and philosophy. The Theosophical Society was gaining followers in India and abroad. During the time that Uday Shankar’s father, Shyam Shankar Chaudhury, was a Sanskrit scholar in Benares at the turn of the century, he became a follower of Theosophical Society leader Annie Besant. Uday’s main partner in his first company was Simkie, whose mother was a member of the Paris branch of the Theosophical Society. In addition, a number of European women, of various descent and experience though none of them Indian, had promoted themselves to the Paris public as Indian dancers. Probably the most famous–and later notorious–was Mata Hari, who presented herself as a devotee of Shiva at the Musee Guimet in 1905. So when Uday Shankar appeared as an authentic Indian, but an accessible one, able to enter the demi-monde and other Paris society as a Brahmin, son of an Indian princely state’s Foreign Minister, and a former partner of prima ballerina Anna Pavlova, this was an entirely different presence, with legitimizing credentials in place. The fact that he found high class patronage, sponsorship, and venues for his programs were a function of both his genius and talent, as well as his connections. One of the issues which I have been researching is the fact that Uday Shankar, in 1924, couldn’t succeed in London, despite these connections, but did find support and avenues for this dance in Paris. Why?
This leads to arguments about the nature of success and fame in the life of a dancer and choreographer. Is talent enough? I doubt it. Are social and political connections sufficient? It seems not to be the case, though they provide some avenues for the competent. But both talent and connections, situated in a place and time when what is offered is appreciated, even catches fire, that is a magical formula. And to understand how the contexts, historical and geographical, provide such a welcoming venue, one must explore and understand them as well.
As a biographer I must also consider the history of India’s cultural presence in Europe in the early part of the twentieth century. Who were the other dancers and dances which were seen by the same audiences as saw Shankar? What were the aesthetic bases for dance criticism in the period, and what was the infrastructure for dance in Europe? How can I compare that system with the venues and sponsors of dance in India during Shankar’s dance career? Nationalism and colonialism are not mere external contexts for Shankar’s dance and success; they are the context in the midst of which he performed, was reviewed, met his patrons, and created his repertoire.
Finally, there is the repertoire itself—a sine qua non— and audience and critical response to Shankar’s productions. In evaluating and analyzing Shankar’s opus, the same complexities of time are involved. What was modern in the 1930s is historical today. Was his legacy to be in touch with his times? In that case his son Ananda and wife Tanushree Shankar are carrying on his father’s new tradition in their Calcutta company. Or was his choreography so far ahead of its time as to be only understood now? Recently, viewing Uday Shankar’s Kalpana in Madras (now called Chennai), I sat amongst a dance audience from the Sri Krishna Gana Sabha, which presents an annual dance conference every December. An Italian practitioner of Bharatanatyam and scholar of Indian culture exclaimed while watching Shankar’s dances, “This is new, it’s post-modern, it’s Indian! Everyone needs to see this now.” I am writing of Uday Shankar in the expectation that these questions are for our times as well as his own.
Dr. Joan L. Erdman is an anthropologist and writer who teaches at Columbia College Chicago and researches at the University of Chicago. She has conducted research in India over the last 35 years. This paper is a revised version, and was originally presented at the annual conference of the Society of Dance History Scholars, Barnard College, New York, on June 21, 1997.
Copyright 1998, Joan L. Erdman.
Originally published in Interchange, a publication of Dance Alloy. |
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