As I sit writing this I am reflecting on an Indian Classical dance concert that I took part in yesterday evening. Over the last several years Janani has been organizing Indian Classical dance concerts in partnership with different Dalhousie student societies to raise money for various local charities. This was the first year that I participated. Yesterday’s show was in partnership with Dalhousie Building Smiles Student Society (DBSS).
It has been some time since I have performed Odissi in a theatre and I must say I was nervous. Leading up to the show my dad said he may not be able to make it because there was traffic on the Macdonald bridge and people were turning around. I had half hoped that the show would be canceled so that I wouldn’t have to agonize on this 16 minute solo. Janani, if you’re reading this…I’m sorry.
Thankfully, the show went on without a hitch and my dad was able to attend…inevitably there were imperfections in my performance but that is not what I am reflecting on now.
Now I am reflecting on that first piece of repertoire that opens an Odissi margam… Namami also known as Mangalacharan. Yesterday, I opened the show with this key piece of repertoire. The Mangalacharan is a piece of repertoire designed to invoke auspicious and divine blessings and to acknowledge the three divine presences in the room: the Gods, the Gurus, and the Audience. And you know, I really believe this and I really believe this piece does this. The audience is a witness to the dancer in an act of prayer as she enters the stage, flowers in hand, and offers them to a statue of the presiding deity in the front left corner of the stage. The piece goes onto to describe the presiding deity and concludes with a salutation to the Gods, the Gurus, and the audience.
When I am not agonizing over technique…I really do believe that I am in an act of prayer. It has been interesting as I continue to deepen my practice in Odissi in the West to really understand and articulate my relationship to faith and where it comes from.
I often have conversations with my dad about this. My dad was born in 1954, 7 years after Indian Independence in Kolkata where he attended Calcutta Boy’s School, a British boarding school. My grandparents moved to Canada with my dad and his two brothers in 1967 when my dad was 13. My dad has always been a spiritual person having lived through Woodstock and the hippie movement. This is evident in his music taste and in the music that he played in the car when I was growing up. I was very influenced by this. From Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan to M.S. Subbulakshmi and the Beatles. Not only that, my dad is an avid scholar of Christianity and the Bible, having visited Mount Athos several times to commune with the Monks. Faith has always been in my house but it has not been one, it has been all.
Unfortunately for me, this relationship to faith and my own upbringing has always been hard for me to put into words. “Religion” is a taboo topic in the West and there are historical reasons for that which we won’t get into here. I’ve never been clear the line between religion and faith and it’s probably something that I am still trying to understand for myself. I just know that talking about faith was never a problem for me until I felt someone was actively trying to proselytize.
As I find myself in contemporary dance spaces in Halifax while simultaneously deepening my Odissi practice I am often confronted. My colonizer mind, imposed on me from growing up in Canada, perceives Odissi music and its purpose as religious, irrelevant, and backwards. This is not surprising given that the British banned these dance and music practices when they colonized India (Also could write a whole post about this). On the other hand, the colonized mind finds solace in this lineage of creative expression. In this form of expression I am able to access a consciousness higher than my own, that knows something beyond me.
I am inspired by this term “Witness” used to describe the observing or testifying to one’s faith. This is a powerful tool when understood in the context of performing arts.
When used responsibly(important), these rituals and practices, I believe are designed to ground a person in their essence and true nature even when the world is asking something else of them. That is very powerful. And I think that definition for me comes close to my relationship to faith. It is a privilege to be part of an artistic tradition that has words for this in life and in the performing arts.