Circling the Square: A Choreographed Approach to the Work of Dr. Kapila Vatsyayan and Western Dance Studies

Extract

When I first came to the University of Chicago in 1973 to study South Asian anthropology and history, and to write about North India's musicians, I was asked whether I would be studying the ancient texts such as Natyashastra and Abhinayadarpana. “No,” I said. “I am interested in today's arts and artists, and their recent history in the courts of Rajasthan, not in ancient texts.”

Eventually I found the writings of Dr. Kapila Vatsyayan, and recognized enduring connections between ancient and modern, great and little traditions, and the importance of all arts for understanding any one of them. This realization arose from her 1968 book on India's performing arts, Classical Indian Dance in Literature and the Arts. In his foreword Rai Krishnadasa, Honorary Director of Bharat Kala Bhavan at Benares, noted that since Indian Independence in 1947, many books dealing with its arts had been published, often “hastily written and often full of errors and even misinformation” (Vatsyayan 1968, xix). Vatsyayan's book, however, was “a breath of fresh air, clear, incisive and invigorating” (xix). She had studied historical and ancient dance texts, researched and analyzed the dance, and long practiced with dance gurus. In doing so, her book merged two traditions of learning: living “repositories of tradition,” and analysis of the “ancestry of dance movement–so integral a part of the evolution of modern dance abroad” (xix). So texts and commentaries, on the one hand, and praxis, on the other, were essential to understanding India's dance and dance traditions, and to reconstructing their history. This combination informs all her publications as well as her significant contributions to the patronage of India's dance culture. For me, it opened the pathway to a merger of text and practice, context and aesthetic process.