International Odissi Festival 2003: Seminar - Madhavi Mudgal on Sanskrit Literature
Duration: 00:21:00; Aspect Ratio: 1.778:1; Hue: 28.355; Saturation: 0.023; Lightness: 0.232; Volume: 0.189; Cuts per Minute: 1.571; Words per Minute: 38.222
Summary: The 2nd International Odissi Festival was organised by IPAP between August 28 - 31, 2003, in Washington D.C. Dedicated to the memory of Guru Pankaj Charan Das, who passed away in June 2003, it brought together Odissi dancers and scholars from all over the world.
Born into a family deeply involved in propagating the classical arts, Madhavi was immersed in music and dance from a very young age. Madhavi trained in Bharata Natyam and Kathak under great gurus. Later she turned to Odissi which she adopted as her preferred medium. Her introduction to Odissi took place under Guru Hare Krishna Bahera who trained her in the fundamentals. Later she came under the tutelage of the renowned Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra. Through teaching, performing and conducting workshops, Madhavi has been actively involved in propagating the art of Odissi in New Delhi and other parts of India as well as the world. She has trained a number of accomplished students who are performers in their own right. Madhavi Mudgal has received a Padmashri, Sanskriti Award and an SNA award, among many others, for her contribution to dance.
Amaru
Amaruk
Gita Govinda
Gupta period
Hindustani music
Jayadeva
Kalidas
Krishna
Mukul Shivputra
Oriya translation
Radha
aesthetic experience
ashtapadi
bhava
blank verse
divine love
maharis
muktaka
nature
nayaka
nayika
poetic technique
sanskrit poetry
Madhavi Mudgal on Sanskrit literature.
The process of transforming a certain text to its final delineation in dance. After all, why do we choose certain texts and what is the whole process that goes into it. The text provides us with the material we can build upon - sanchari bhava; but we also choose the text because we want to take the audience with us, on a journey together- to reach somewhere, and that is the ultimate aim, to be involved in that rasa that the artist is consciously seeking to create. And taking the audience with her...
Sanskrit provides us hordes of possibilities; it is so closely linked with the classicism of Odissi that it goes together very well.
Amaru or Amaruk came much before Jayadeva, around the 6th century AD. Amaruk is one of the most celebrated Sanskrit poets who wrote muktakas, which are really four-line poems. And love was the favourite theme of muktakas and Amaru one of its greatest masters. He lived just after the Gupta age during the 6th and 7th century.
Sanskrit critics have claimed that a single Amaru muktaka can say more than a hundred long poems by other lesser poets. And maybe that was the reason why he wrote very little, no more than a hundred four-line verses. Striking is the modern feel of some of his poems. He is perhaps the only Sanskrit poet sensitive to the tragedy of love ending in indifference.
This muktaka came at a festival Madhavi organised in Delhi where eveyrone had to do their own interpretation of the same muktaka.
This is about a repentant nayaka who follows his old love, but the woman remains unmoved by his sudden appearance. As if she is recalling to her mind this incident she says
Verse:
kopo yatra bhrükuöiracanä
nigraho yatra maunaā.
tasya premëastad idamadhunä
vaiņamaā paįya jätaā
Translation:
A frown spelt wrath...
and silence could inhibit
a smile was a plea,
and a look an offering
such was our love
And look now, how it lies in ruins
you lie at my feet seeking forgiveness
and i cannot untangle myself from my anger.
The music has been composed by Mukul Shivputra, the son of Kumar Gandharva, and is very entrenched in the Hindustani classical style. As a challenge, I explained to him the kind of bhava I needed and he composed it in free verse. The last line is also the punchline of the piece - it is like a climax and it cannot be repeated several times for the sanchari. Nothing else could be said after that, she thought.
Amaru satakas were translated by Mayadhar Mansingh into Oriya and printed by the Orissa Lalit Kala Akademi.
Madhavi Mudgal performs.
Verse:
kopo yatra bhrükuöiracanä
nigraho yatra maunaā.
tasya premëastad idamadhunä
vaisamam pasya jätam
tvam padante luthasi nahi me manyumokshah khalaiyah
Translation:
A frown spelt wrath...
and silence could inhibit
a smile was a plea,
and a look an offering
such was our love
And look now, how it lies in ruins
you lie at my feet seeking forgiveness
and i cannot untangle myself from my anger.
She draws attention to the starkness of the poetry. It doesn't demand more than this. Unlike these classical poets like Kalidas, Bhartrhari and Amaruk appealed to an educated audience - people who were familiar with poetic technique, linguistic subleties of the Sanskrit language; Jayadeva seems to have been consciously appealing to a more diverse audience. This is evident from his intent to reach an audience sympathetic to creative purposes of enjoying Krishna's divine love through aesthetic experience.
Jayadeva is believed to have written the Gita Govinda for his wife Padmavati, who danced, so he provides various tools for the transformation of text to dance. All the verses lend themselves to transformation through sanchari bhava. Each and every line is capable of being part of varied combinations of bhava. The nayak-nayika bhed is there. Except proshitapatika, all the seven other ashtanayikas are mentioned. The text is tactile-sounding; there are no hard syllables like - ta or dha.
"Lalita lavanga lata parishilana...so soft, so beautiful to hear, and so gay. All the singers find it so easy to sing. For that reason it reached all the corners of India by the 15th century, through oral transmission."
His use of nature - the trees, creepers, Yamuna, flowers, the smells, the breeze - they again provide many tools to a dancer for interpretation - because of colours - pitavasana etc.
She invites questions from the audience.
In reply to a meandering question by Jayant Kastuar, she says that the great popularity of the ashtapadis around the country gives dancers the license to approach it in so many different ways. There are some typical tunes adopted by the maharis who sang in the Puri temple which are not very suited to repetition and sanchari sometimes. She says that she prefers to work with the bhava of the song to see what kind of music has to composed to bring out the bhava in the best way possible.
Pad.ma requires JavaScript.
