Kumudini Lakhia
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A life in Kathak
The Times of India Dec 22 2015
Malini Nair
From doing away with the dupatta to introducing secular themes on stage, the grande dame of contemporary kathak, Kumudini Lakhia, has been redefining the dance form for 50 years
Nothing riles the indomitable Kumudiwni Lakhia as much as the idea of unquestioning reverence. She is 85 but a big ger rebel than dancers half her age. At Kadamb, her dance school in Ahmedabad which turned 50 this year, she refuses to let students sit at her feet. “Sit up here, next to me, respect your spine,“ she commands. And as for gurudom, she is emphatic: “I tell my students khabardar, don't go up on stage and call me guru, take responsibility for what you are doing.“
In the once cloistered world of kathak, there are few rules Kumiben, as she is fondly called, hasn't defied. From movements and mudras to body language and aesthetics of presentation, the changes she brought were sweeping. She gave kathak definition, dignity , methodology and most importantly , room to change and grow.
Lakhia's dance philosophy inspired a wide spectrum of avant garde kathak and contemporary dancers in India and abroad today -Aditi Mangaldas, Prashant Shah, Daksha Sheth, Akram Khan, Aakash Odedra, Sanjukta Sinha and Vaishali Trivedi among them. They are all dancers who are constantly pushing boundaries as they stay moored to kathak. At Kadamb's celebrations in Ahmedabad, there were over 20 alumni dancers from across the world, from Japan to Canada.
Kumiben says her relearning started after her famous dance collaborations with legendary dancer Ram Gopal in the late 1940s. “I would do what my guru told me till 17, then I started touring the world with him. I saw ballet in Spain, the USSR, Britain, US and I saw the planning that went into dance -the costuming, stage design, lights. I saw how beautiful dance can look when there is discipline in the lines of the body ,“ recalls Kumiben.
Those were years when kathak was stuck in time. Stagecraft and aesthetics were missing from performances, costumes and jewellery were tacky , and as for the themes, they were limited mostly to Radha-Krishna sagas. What Kumiben did was to take the casualness out of kathak -lighting became subtle, costumes ac quired elegance and form. She insisted on a straight spine (you can tell the Kadamb school by the confident, erect stance of the dancer), clear lines and intelligence in dance.More radically, she choreographed modern, secular poetry, abandoning mythology .
Renowned bharatanatyam master CV Chandrashekhar still remembers her choreography of The Coat, based on Khuntiyon Par Tange Log by poet Sarveshwar Dayal Saxena, in Vadodara. “I was stunned by her courage in bringing a contemporary theme to stage, it gave me great strength to explore alternate themes in bharatanatyam,“ he says.
One of her most path-breaking works was Duvidha, a solo performed in 1971 about a woman caught between household drudgery and her ambition to fly high. It was way ahead of its times. The dancer wore a plain sari with a thin border tucked in at the waist, no jewellery except ear rings, no stagey makeup, just kajal lining the eye. The music by Atul Desai was elec tronic. It shocked the purists, and got as much flak as applause. “I said let us give the gods a break from kathak. Why not have a middle class, middle aged housewife on stage weary of washing, cooking and cleaning dreaming of becoming that powerful woman Prime Minister she reads about? Why should the heroine always be the Natya Shastra ideal -young, willowy , curvaceous?“ asks the irrepressible Lakhia.
The acerbic Statesman critic Subbudu described Duvidha as “ridicu lous“. The review gave her sleepless nights, she admits, but points out in gleeful triumph with a chuckle: “But I made him sit up, right? I said I will do this a hundred times till I educate Subuddu. And I did, after 25 years he called me a pioneer.“
She went on to create many more contemporary kathak pieces such as Prem Chakshu, Yugal, Shakti and Atah Kim? and Dhabkar. She never stopped experimenting, using African, jazz, rock, folk and dhrupad music for her dances. “I hate archaic classicism. I asked my students to abandon unnecessary ornamentation -no bangles, elaborate chains, hair jewels hat always get caught in the dupatta,“ she says miming the hapless dancer dealing with costume malfunction on stage.
Most famously she asked her dancers o abandon the billowing yards of dupatta.When Dhabkar, based on the beating pulse, came to Delhi the outrage over this was huge. “They called us `besharam' for not covering up the chest. I say you take 15 years to train your body , then come up on he stage and cover the torso, where the movements show so beautifully , with yards of cloth. Let the dance cover your body not billowing cloth,“ she says.
A lot of trends she started are now a part of accepted kathak idiom. The chakkars pirouettes where the body revolves at a spot but also in a large circle around he stage, the erect bearing, the abstract hemes, the dramatic bol pattens, even the demanding levels of fitness that are so de rigeur now.
“She transformed the way we used space, redefined movement and its trans erence so that even a small dancer can fill he stage. Most importantly , she taught us to be independent minded and adventur ous,“ says dancer Aditi Mangaldas.
Age hasn't withered the danc er's enthusiasm. As her grand son jokes, she often declares her future plans at the din ing table with the prefix “When I grow old...“
Attributions
India Today, January 6, 2016
Suhani Singh
The veteran dancer's nearly eight decade-long journey in kathak is a testatment to rhythm. And she shows no signs of stopping.
It is a packed house at Kadamb, Kumudini Lakhia's renowned kathak institute in Ahmedabad. Its 180-plus students are putting their best foot forward to celebrate 50 years of the school. Parents beam as they watch their daughters dance gracefully in billowing kurtas, move in sync and make formations. Kumibehn, the popular moniker for one of India's legendary choreographers, has designed the costumes, set the choreography and established the institute which has seen alumni such as Daksha Sheth and Aditi Mangaldas. She has partnered with two of the finest male dancers-Ram Gopal and Birju Maharaj. She has made Rekha into a most expressive courtesan in Umrao Jaan. She has created 84 productions, toured 84 countries. "Take a bow," says Lakhia, 85, after each performance concludes. The words are befitting her terpsichorean journey too. For five decades now, Lakhia has been enriching the kathak repertoire by choreographing pieces-a chunk of them group works, but also training dancers to perform them adeptly. Lakhia's style enhances kathak's elegance, fluidity and dynamism. The stage is her canvas and she the painter who uses the body to create alluring patterns across it. Take 'Samanvay', which has 21 dancers spin, jump and glide with such poise and precision that one wants to freeze the movement in time. Lakhia's style never deviates from classical kathak but her thought process and presentation is contemporary. With Kadamb, Lakhia has set the benchmark for group works, which are now increasingly popular as audience and show organisers believe that more is merrier. And few can rival her in group choreography, a genre she pretty much invented in the early 1970s. "It is frightening to imagine what kathak would be without Kumibehn," says Mangaldas, who now runs her own company. "She saw infinite possibilities in the small, fragile body. She realised that it cannot be attained if there are restrictions."
New revolutions
"I am a disciplinarian," says Lakhia seated in her spacious villa in Amrakadamb, which she shares with her daughter, son-in-law and two dachshunds-Barney and Fred. Her spine is erect, memory sharp, and the enthusiasm for creating still strong. The physicality of Lakhia's choreography requires that Kadamb dancers don't compromise on riyaaz (practice). She says, "Riyaaz should be such that every movement comes naturally and it allows you to concentrate on aesthetics." She focuses on spatial awareness as much as body symmetry. She is a known stickler for details. "If there is a little thread hanging from the sleeves of the kurta, she will point it out," says 29-year-old Sanjukta Sinha, one of the rising stars of Kadamb. "Birju Maharaj ji is a storyteller, more spiritual while Kumibehn is more scientific," says acclaimed contemporary and kathak dancer Akram Khan who has participated in workshops conducted by Lakhia in Britain.
There are next to no stories of Radha, Krishna and Shiva in her oeuvre. "I was tired of all these gods and goddesses," says Lakhia. "Can dance not stand on its own without sahitya?" It was in the abstract that Lakhia found her inspiration. In her first production, 'Dhapkar' (1973), she wanted to find the pulse of the kathak dancer. Her most famous work, 'Atah Kim' (1981), which translates to 'Where Do I Go From Here?', is one of the finest representations of Lakhia's eternal quest to play with space. There's 'Yugal' (1978), a male-female duet, which highlights both the lyrical and the vigorous aspects of kathak. In her choreographic stint Lakhia has initially shocked but mostly wowed the dance fraternity with her vision and experiments. She has set kathak to jazz, blues, folk music, dhrupad, rock, Sufi and even electronica. On the sartorial front, she let go off the dupatta and most of the jewellery inviting a host of criticism. "When my dancers wore white costumes in Delhi, they said, 'Kiske matam mein aaye ho? (You've come for somebody's funeral?')" But moving from Delhi, where she trained in the Lucknow school of kathak under Shambhu Maharaj at Shriram Bharatiya Kala Kendra, to Ahmedabad, where she worked according to her own parameters, Lakhia's dance grew. "Delhi would have swallowed me up," she says. Ahmedabad, her husband's home, gave her "space. It was absolutely unpolluted. The people of Gujarat don't interfere". Born in Bombay as Kumudini Jaykar, Lakhia took to dancing early. Her earliest memory is dancing to 'Chudi Mai Laya Anmol Re' from Achhut Kanya (1936), starring Ashok Kumar and Devika Rani. Lakhia's mother Leela, a classical singer, saw this artistic side and decided to encourage it. Lakhia began training in kathak at the age of seven with Sohanlal from the Bikaner gharana of kathak, moving to Ashiq Hussain of Benaras gharana and then the renowned Sunder Prasad of the Jaipur school. "My mother was more worried about my dance than my studies," says Lakhia. So devoted was Leela in her mission to get her daughter to dance that she sent a teacher, Radheylal Misra, a student of kathak practitioner Jai Lal, to Lahore and Allahabad, where Lakhia did her schooling and college respectively. He would later travel with Lakhia to London in 1948, when she began dancing in Ram Gopal productions such as 'The Legend of the Taj Mahal'. It was on this five-year tour that Lakhia was exposed to a world of dancing where the stage, light and costume design and the unison of the ballet corps would mesmerise her. Two decades later she would replicate these features in her own work.
The art of questioning
From Gopal, she learned the significance of "professionalism"."I used to get so much energy and warmth from him," says Lakhia about Gopal. She has similar praise for Birju Maharaj with whom she danced in the 1950s and 1960s. "There is not going to be another Birju Maharaj. He is something phenomenal." Such is her admiration that she isn't peeved that one of her senior students, Aditi Mangaldas, chose to train with him. Mangaldas, in turn, praises her guru for encouraging her students to "question". "The guru-shishya parampara means questioning is not allowed. The attitude is, 'Who are you to question me?' As dance teachers we have a right to train their bodies but not their souls. You have to give the new generation space and not curb their imagination. I have taught them the grammar," says Lakhia. Whether she is at Kadamb or at home in Amrakadamb, Lakhia breathes dance. She still wakes up in the middle of the night to alter the movements and come up with new formations. Post breakfast is when she is her productive best, just before she is making her way to Kadamb. "I am growing, I am learning," says Lakhia. "I love kathak. It is like my grandmother's saree. It is tattered and the lace is a bit shaky. So I darn it because I want to wear it."
