In India I, often on Indian dance and temples, 1-19 (February 5-13, 2012)

Ten years ago - from February 5 to March 4, 2012 - I made my first visit to India, largely to see dance and to investigate aspects of the Indian culture around dance. I then made a second trip (from December 10, 2014, to January 10, 2015). Although I wrote about both trips for the New York Times, I paid for these at my own expense, but was given generous financial assistance by the Asian American Arts Council. My great and enduring thanks to Rajika Puri, Stanford Makishi, and Sunil Kothari, who did so much to make both visits mind-expanding. During both trips, I wrote a vast amount of emails to friends, most of them accompanied by photographs. Here I begin revisiting these emails.

I spent the first four nights in Delhi. , It so happens that on my very first night in Delhi I saw a performance by Birju Maharaj, who died last month and on whose “New York Times” obituary I recently spent several days’ work. Sunil Kothari, the senior critic whom I also mention here, died over a year before Maharaj; I wrote his “NY Times” obituary too. These deaths make me realise that my 2012 Indian trip is further removed in time than it still feels to me now. Other people I met in that first week in India - Madhavi Mudgal, Rama Vaidynathan, Surupa Sen, Bijayini Satpathy, Lynne Fernández, Briana Blasko - remain valued friends. Rahul Acharya, although I never met him until years later, became a frequent, inspiring, and intensely informative correspondent.

Some of these emails are group emails I sent to more than a hundred friends, mainly in the United States and United Kingdom. Some are parts of more specialist correspondence with Indian dance experts and Western dance critics, and others with old friends of more than thirty years’ standing.

AM, February 2022.

1: New Delhi, Monday 6 February, 2012

I flew on Saturday morning to London and thence to Delhi. We waited in the 'plane on the runway till almost 4am to take off (five hours late), and, as work and planning had kept me up all Friday night before flying, it was quite a trek. I slept at least ten hours last night and hope to sleep as many tonight. But on arrival last night I managed to get to a Kathak performance by Birju Maharaj, one of the maestri, now aged 74, but amazing. Then today I watched Mahdavi Mudgal, an Odissi maestra whom I've seen dance in Edinburgh, London, and New York, teach students for over three hours. Tomorrow morning, I watch her rehearse.

When I opened my curtains this morning - my fourth-floor window overlooks a school playground - there were scores and score of boys playing soccer in long trousers and sweaters over their shirts, some of them even wearing ties and one a turban. Nearer me were all kinds of birds - green parrots moving at great speed, and, wheeling at greater leisure, vultures. (I couldn't believe this at first, buthave had it confirmed since.)

Even just the New Delhi part of Delhi is spread out in an L.A.-type way: Sunil Kothari, a leading dance critic here, had told me last night's auditorium was "very near" the residential center where I'm staying - but that means fifteen minutes by taxi without serious traffic. Coming back from the rehearsal today, we sat in gridlock for at least twenty minutes. I tell you all this to warn you for when you come.

The real adventures doubtless begin later on. On Thursday I move to Nrityagram, though I suspect that bigger adventures will follow as I try to make my way around Tamil Nadu.

Back to New York on March 4.

(I had seen Birju Maharaj dance in Edinburgh in 2002; I was to see him again in 2014 in Washington D.C. He died in January 2022; I have had to write his New York Times obituary. Sunil Kothari, with whom I spent time in New York, Delhi, Bhubaneswar, Washington D.C. died in December 2020; I wrote his New York Times obituary, too.)

2: New Delhi, Monday 6 February, 2012

I'm at the stage where, of course, everything in the cosmos seems Cunninghamian. That is NOT why I came to India, but there certainly are connections. Trish <Patricia> Lent found in Merce's notes that Fabrications (1987) contains references to (illustrations of) the permanent emotions of Indian theater; as soon as I heard this, I knew which the grief one was, but some of the other six aren't really recognizable. The croisé attitude front fonduthat Karen Fink/Radford held for an age in Pictures centerstage strikes me as v. Vishnu. I had better not start about the organization of long phrases.

<The Merce Cunningham Dance Company had closed at the end of 2011, in a blaze of glory, in New York. I had been watching it for thirty years.>

3:New Delhi, Wednesday, 8 February, 2012

So yesterday afternoon I was watching dancers being taught Odissi dance style and thought of you; yesterday evening I sent an email to two Indian dance experts about the Kathak dance performance I had seen on Sunday night; this morning I received a firm correction from one of them; then I went for a walk on your recommendation In the Lodhi Gardens; this afternoon I was the star guest at a reception given solely in my honor with the great and good of Indian dance all in attendance; this evening I write to give you a correction about Balanchine. It seems that everything is part of some larger pattern.

On the whole, I have seen little but dance since I arrived, but my days have been full. And today did include an exciting journey by autorickshaw, foot, and rickshaw around Old Delhi. Bed now - I never got to be bed once between Friday morning and Sunday night, and slept only a couple of hours on either 'plane, so there remains a vast amount of slumber to catch up on.

4: New Delhi, Wednesday, 8 February, 2012

Well, I leave Delhi in a few hours' time: it's been wonderful. In the event, Anita didn't join us, but we had a good evening anyway last night. I spent quite a lot of time on Monday and Tuesday with Madhavi, which was just wonderful: I watched her teach and rehearse, and she also took me to several parts of Delhi (including Old Delhi by a mixture of autorickshaw (a sort of taxi for two passengers with the front open to the air), and rickshaw(bicycle version of the same), and foot. On another trip. I travelled on the back of a motorcycle (don't ask, but it was fun).

I'm sorry about remembering Birju Maharaj with fewer clothes in 2002! It just goes to show that even my memory has bad errors. But I do know that he made a deeper impression on me this time. When I'm back in New York, I'll look up my Times Literary Supplement review from 2002 and check what I wrote then.

An obvious question about the Russian ballet La Bayadère. As I'm sure you know, its heroine, Nikiya, is a temple dancer - presumably, a devadasi - but in the north of India, within view of the Himalayas. Were there devadasis in the North? So far I have only read about them in the South. I don't know why I ask, really, since the ballet - at least as they dance it now in a very Soviet version - is a travesty of Indian dance and culture; but I'd like to think that when Petipa first choreographed it, he was trying to be serious.

And - this is really for when I return - what written history or histories of Indian classical dancing do you most recommend? Or which guides to each dance form?

Sunil <Kothari> could not have been kinder or more enthusiastic; and he knows everybody in Indian dance. A frightening proportion of the great and the good of Indian dance all cameThe reception in my honor on Tuesday at first seemed terrifying - there were three speeches about me, quoting my reviews - with the great and good of Indian classical dance gathered in the audience. and then I found I was asked to make one too. (I said that, if this reception was in New York with an audience of dancers, they'd be throwing things at me.) Fortunatelyit quickly dissolved into a very good-humoured and happy tea-party.

I am still waking up at the wrong time (it's almost 3am!), so must try now to sleep.

5: New Delhi, Wednesday 8 February, 2012

I didn't get to bed between Friday morning and Sunday night, and slept only about two hours on the 'plane, so there is still a great deal of sleep to catch up on. I'm wide awake right now, however, at 3-4am. Yesterday afternoon brought the reception in my honor, which began with terrifying formality - three speeches in my honor, quoting my reviews, I was solemnly drapes in a white scarf decorated with borders depicting the Ganges and another river, given a bouquet, and fthen I was expected to make an address (nobody had told me, so I was truly improvising),after which there was a question-and-answer session. The audience really did include the great and the good of most forms of Indian dance, but also some young contemporary dancers. Fortunately, few if any practicing dancers are grand or pretentious, so it soon became good-humored and then dissolved into a very happy tea-party; I was so relieved,though immensely honored too.

Delhi is vast and more laden with history than I had anticipated. You can pay Western prices for some things, but I'm told that today I should hire a taxi for half a day for 500 rupees, which is, I think, about twelve dollars.

Hope all's well. I will try to go back to sleep now.

6: Nrityagram (Karnataka), Friday, February 10, 2012

Hello -

You can imagine how strange it feels to read emails, especially on Miami City Ballet politics, on my iPhone in bed underneath a mosquito net in my guest hut at Nrityagram at 5.30am. Was just woken by a quarrel among wild dogs outside.

Arrived here yesterday from Delhi. From Bangaluru (Bangalore) Airport, the journey by car to Nrityagram takes an hour, passing trees lit up by bloom of astonishing orange ("Flames of the Forest", a tree that blooms for about three weeks around now), yellow and red, with bougainvillea in several different equally bright colors climbing in many places too. At one point, the car took a slight detour around a monkey that was sitting on the side of the road and had no intention of moving for a mere car. Wild goats wandering beside the road; and women squatting in the dirt wearing saris of the most brilliant colors and patterns.

The dogs are still barking, but further away now. The overlay of birdcalls yesterday afternoon was amazing, building into a kind of sonic engine of multiple pulses - I had a nap after my arrival and fell asleep listening to them all around my hut. (At one point, reminded of score for Merce Cunningham dance theatre, I thought "Oh I see - John Cage and Tudor and Kosugi were thinking of birdcalls in India.") There's still no sign of dawn - though I hear the multi-layered beginnings of a dawn chorus now - so I shall try to go back to sleep now.

7: Nrityagram (Karnataka), Saturday, 11 February

There's much, much I won't see this trip - no Rajasthan, no Varanasi (Benares) (except to change planes), neither Mumbai (Bombay) nor Kolkata (Calcutta), no Kerala or Goa or burning Ghats, probably no spice markets or elephants, certainly no Ganges. To see everything I want would fill a second four-week holiday and then a third - and even then I'd be leaving out your tiger-watching trip.

This trip started with Delhi (Sunday- Wednesday), though other than dance all I saw was a drive round the grandest parts of New Delhi (the presidential palace, formerly the Viceroy's palace, which is larger than Buckingham Palace or the White House and more grandly located at the end of a long and splendid avenue) and a taste of the messier part of Old Delhi. Now (Thursday-Sunday), I'm at the dance village of Nrityagram, which is inland in the southwest, an hour north by car from Bengaluru(Bangalore). So far this is the furthest south I've ever been in my life, though next week I will go further.

There are amazingly well dressedschoolchildren, yes, but I saw also a little of the poverty and dirt of Old Delhi too - children begging, though not as shocking as I had been prepared for, and the dirt is the same as the back streets of Cairo, Aswan, and Marrakech. There are narrow streets lined with shops (one street selling nothing but silver ornaments), which are more or less onlyfor pedestrians, dusty and dirty, with dozens of electric wires all garlanded together along the street just above door level.

I spent half an afternoon at the National Museum in Delhi, which is partly run down and partly closed but still has many wonders and beauties going back five millennia. The Lodhi Gardens near where I was staying has old ruined mosques, lakes, a bridge dating back five centuries, chipmunks (Indian squirrels), and all kinds of birds - I saw two green parrakeets entering their nest by way of a hole in a tree.

Food all pleasant so far and some of it delicious. Dozens of people gave me advice beforehand: everyone warned me about ice and salads, but most of them then admitted they got Delhi belly at one stage or another of their trips and that I just must accept that I will too. (One friend said he had taken such precautions that, when he got Delhi belly, the only explanation he could find was that he must have absorbed some water from the shower.) So I'm telling myself that I will succumb too. But actually my friend Laura said that the trick is to have some yoghurt every day and something like grapeseed (not available where I'm staying!); my friend Deirdre simply said she's made five trips to India without any trouble, and just eating sensibly is the trick. So we'll see.

Now to have an afternoon nap or at least lie and listen to the soundscape of birds all roundthe hut.

8: Nrityagram (Karnataka), Saturday 11, 2012

I think of Cunningham quite a lot in India; I wish I knew where and when he studied aspects of Indian culture, but evidently he acquired quite a knowledge before he founded the company in 1953. There is a step in the best-known "Trails" duet that I feel sure he derived from Indian dance, possibly the Mohiniattam genre; it's not hard, so I'll show you in March. But I think there are larger points of style - perhaps above all the long uses of statuesque stillness (sometimes immediately followed by ebullient speed) - that he took too, as well as the philosophical fascination in order and chaos as opposite poles and much else.

9: Nrityagram (Karnataka), Sunday 12February, 2012

The greatest sensuous delight so far has been the dawn chorus (and afternoon birdsong too) as heard from inside my hut here in Nrityagram. This amazing simultaneous overlay of different pulsations!

Mark Morris (apparently) comes to Southern India every year, and always stays at this Nrityagram dance village; the first time he came, they had no clue he was a famous choreographer. He also spends time in Chennai and at an ashram in Kerala. Apparently his taste for Indian music is really advanced, and his knowledge of - feeling for - Indian dance quite remarkable (by Indian standards). Since Indian dance, myth, and philosophy were also important to MerceCunningham, I think you had better follow suit. Come, travel, immerse yourself.

Please do your best to watch the Nrityagram company at the Joyce in March (20-25): they’ll be showing a collaboration with a Sri Lankan company, which is here rehearsing right now. Two of them are very beautiful Odissi dancers and the Odissi style is really India's loveliest. They live very simply here, an hour from the city, largely eating food produced on their own land, teaching students for free (even those who come for a three-year course), andsupport themselves entirely by the dance performances they do. The right American tour, even though they bring live musicians, sets them up for the rest of the year. Here they live and breathe dance often from 8am to 11pm. I've at last begun to learn a tiny amount of the complexities of Odissi style and history. They're happy to talk, and it connects to what Madhavi Mudgal told me in Delhi (though there are important points of difference too: do you bend the head or the shoulder? How far apart are the feet in the choka position?)

Yesterday afternoon, two of them took me on a shopping trip to Bangalore (Bengaluru) - an hour by myself on Commercial Street would have been quite a blast of urban reality at any time, but doubly so after the village peace here - and when we came back the two Sri Lankan dancers were still working quietly on corrections, going over one passage in Odissirhythm again and again with three Odissimusicians (two of them both strikingly handsome and modest) and their Sri Lankan choreographer; I don't think they stopped until 9pm. The experiment is not to make the Sri Lankans dance like Odissi dancers or vice versa - you'll see the differences but also the correspondences between their styles (they feel this Sri Lankan is a close "masculine" counterpart to the essentially feminine style of Odissi) - but at certain points, much more subtly, to make each dance to the other one's local drum rhythm.

Part of my original desire to visit India was to see temples, and as yet I have seen none. So that adventure begins tomorrow, when I move to Tamil Nadu; and from then on I think I will be seeing at least one temple a day (sometimes many) for the next eighteen days. More of these in due course.

10: Nrityagram (Karnataka), Saturday 12 February

Well, some of you have been asking for photos of the dancing I've been watching. The quick answer is that I'm certainly not a dance photographer, and that I've only seen one formal performance to date. I'll see a few more soon. mainly I've been watching rehearsals and lessons, and, more important, looking deliberately at images of movement in Indian sculpture; I'll carry on doing that throughout the trip. But the "New York Times" sent the dance photographer Briana Blasko to Nrityagram while I was there, and, though she photographed actual rehearsals and one studio sharing, on the morning of Sunday 11 she got five dancers and three musicians to come into the open air for a photo shoot; and I couldn't resist snapping.

The dancer at the centre of this pic <6> is the lustrous Bijayini Satpathy, longterm Nrityagram luminary; Briana - who has been in India for two or three years, working on a book on dance and fabric, and who will join me at three other points in my journey - is with her back to us; and the young dancer in red is one of the two Sri Lankan dancers from the Chitrasena Dance Company, which - guru, choreographer, drummer, and two dancers - has been collaborating since August on the production that will be seen at the Joyce in March.

For those of you who don't know dance, the Nrityagram ensemble dances in the Odissi style (from the state of Orissa in the East of India, where I'm going later in this trip). All its three longterm dancers felt that they connected better with the Chitrasena company than with anyone else to date when they first encountered each other four years ago; last year this project became a reality. The point is not that the two companies have the same style, but that the two styles work well together: the Chitrasena style, though danced by two ravishingly lovely young women, is considered "masculine" to the "feminine" grace of Odissi - though that's a generalization, since Odissi contains its own masculine elements too. The Indian and Sri Lankan dancers even wear different ankle bells (but I was interested to see the Sri Lankan ankle bells on a sculpted deity in the temple at Madurai). I had to ask in what respects the dancers take from each other's styles, because it wasn't obvious; you can see the differences at all points. The answer was in the rhythms: there are sections where the Nrityagram dancers move to the Sri Lanka=an drum rhythms, and others where the Chitrasena dancers move to the Odissi drum rhythms. (The drums look roughly alike and are both held across the drummer's knees when played, but the Sri Lankan one is a lot louder as well using different metres.)

Anyway, you get some sense of the idyllic nature of Nrityagram.

11: Nrityagram (Karnataka), Sunday 12 February, 2012

See previous email. Here <7> you see everyone involved (except the Sri Lankan drummer, who was away that day, and the Nrityagramflautist, who arrived later that morning): the three Nrityagram musicians seated, the three Nrityagram women in dance costume (though not as they will be dressed for this production, I think - not sure) at the centre, and the two Sri Lankan (Chitrasena) dancers on the right, in one of the moments where they come closest to sharing the same movement - and Briana taking the real photograph. If I hadn't already respected the art of the dance photographer, I would have learnt to very quickly on this occasion when I found how often I was pressing the trigger at just the wrong half-second.

This was about 9-9.30am. In case you're curious, Nrityagram, near Bangalore (Bengaluru), is high above sea level, and so has moderate temperatures all year round more or less.

12: Nrityagram (Karnataka), Sunday 12 February, 2012

This one <8> perfectly shows my ability to take the photograph at the wrong moment, but maybe at least it begins to show you something of a difference of idiom between the Sri Lankan and Odissi dancers - and the sense of dialogue between styles.

13: Nrityagram (Karnataka), Sunday 12 February, 2012

Yet again I didn't catch quite the right moment, but at least you see <9> the sideways curves of the body that are a core ingredient of the Odissi style. The musicians and dancers were all using a deliberately slow tempo, by the way, to suit the photography.

14:Nrityagram (Karnataka), Sunday 12 February, 2012

See previous emails. The dancers <10> are Bijayini Satpathy (left) and Pavithra Reddy, both of whom have been at Nrityagram for some eighteen years.

15: Nrityagram (Karnataka), Sunday 12 February

Watching the Nrityagram dancers again today, I began to work out a Ph.D. thesis on Ashton's Orientalism: spanning from (maybe) Horoscope and (definitely) Wise Virgins via La Péri to Thaïs. But what I want to suggest is that the opening phrase of SymphonicVariations has a latent Orientalism - the crossed-over stance is obviously Indian anyway, but then those ultra-croisé ports de bras are too. And then Trois Gnossiennes(green Monotones) with those attitudes in parallel. Maybe also Tiresias and aspects of Daphnis.

16: Nrityagram (Karnataka), Sunday 12 February

Sixteen girls and women take a Sunday-morning Odissi class at Nrityagram: you see <11> the S-bend curves up the body. I think this pose is called "tribhanga", with three curves (knee, torso, neck). Basically the hips should not tip. And there is dispute between Odissi stylists as to whether the topmost curve should be at the head or the shoulders. One of the three gurus who did most to reconstruct Odissi between the 1950s and 1980s changed his own views on this over the years, I'm told. I loved watching this class, and wish I could have a film of the sequence (luxurious to any Western eye) when they all counted and chanted their way through some forty successive different positions of the hands and fingers.

17: Nrityagram (Karnataka), Sunday 12, February

And this <12> position (if I understand aright - it's easy to make mistakes on these stylistic points!) is the "abhanga", where the sole curve is of one knee, with all the weight on the opposite leg. It connects to the terrific amount of déhanchement - displacement of weight onto one hip - throughout much Indian sculpture, though I have yet to see the sculpture of Orissa (where Odissi is from), which is said to be more subtle in dance (or dancelike) imagery and has been a growing source for the reconstruction of Odissi. One Odissi expert says: Which came first, the egg or the hen, the sculpture or the dance? It's very ambiguous whether much Indian sculpture actually depicts dancing or shows a dancelike quality to other actions. But then dance pervades Hindu myth much more (I think) than that of other cultures.

18: Nrityagram (Karnataka), Monday 13 February

By the way, they don't follow my reviews of Western dance here! They love me because I've given more space to Indian dance than it's ever received. The politics of Indian dance and Indian dance politics make New York's seem idyllic, but generally everyone salaams me. The senior Delhi critic, a sweet, enthusiastic, generous, but sometimes incoherent and incomprehensible man, not only organized the Delhi reception in my honor but also yesterday wrote to all the dance world of Orissa ordering them to throw another reception for me while I'm there! Fortunately; he copied me in on it, so I promptly wrote to everyone on his list to say "I really hope to meet you all when I'm there, but please - NO reception.”

19: Nrityagram (Karnataka), Sunday 12 February

I'm loving India so far, and seem to be seeing a particular amount of Odissi dance.… There have already been days here when I've been talking Odissi, Odissi, Odissi. So far it's just been Delhi and Nrityagram (dance village near Bangalore); this morning, though, I journey to Tamil Nadu (where I'll be until the 24th) and start my serious absorption in temples.

Rise, Alastair, and start your day.... (I write this under a mosquito net while the dawn chorus outside is a whole fabric of separate pulsations all around.)