June 1st: Solo by Sixty: Chhandika's Sixth Annual Student Kathak Concert

It has been a while since I last blogged about my kathak studies under Gretchen Hayden but I've not ceased my studies. In fact, I am performing kathak for the first time as one of the beginning students in Chhandika's Sixth Annual Student Show, Sunday, June 1st. Hopefully, over the next several days, I'll post additional reflections on my training.

Solo by Sixty:
A voyage through the phases of a classical kathak dance concert

Sunday, June 1, 2008
4:30pm - 7:00pm
Peabody School Auditorium
70 Rindge Ave.
Cambridge, MA

General: $15
Children 12 and under: $5
Tickets available at the door.

Belated Follow-Up to Sarod & Kathak Concert

Happy New Year!

I have not updated my blog in a few weeks as I have been rather occupied with some other creative projects. I will write about the status of those projects shortly.

But first, a belated follow-up to the Sarod & Kathak concert I mentioned previously. Firstly, two corrections: 1.) Pandit Ramesh Misra had to cancel his appearance, 2.) I was mistaken in the identity of the tabla player: Nitin Mitta played tabla that evening.

As I have come to a greater understanding of the rhythms of kathak dance (even at my status as a beginner) I found that I could listen to George Ruckert's playing ragas on sarod and better grasp the structure of the melodies of Hindustani music which before I probably only appreciated for its timbral qualities and emotional content. Perhaps someday I will be able to hear it with the same understanding I have when I listen to jazz or rock.

Of course, I had come to see Gretchen Hayden, my teacher, dance. One highlight was a piece from the story-telling repertoire that is taught to kathak students at Chhandika: the tale of how Krishna, as a child, conquered the water-snake demon, Kalia Naag, while fetching his ball after it fell into the Yamuna river. When we practice the story in class or in workshops, the game is one of keep-away, but that evening Gretchenji improvised a game of baseball, miming the pitches, the swings, the spitting on the ground, and the arguing with the umpire. Georgeji began to improvise a melody based on "Take Me Out To the Ball Game".


The effect was such I had to watch The Cameraman when I got home and compare it with the scene in which Buster Keaton playing a news reel cameraman, discovers that the New York Yankees are playing out of town, so he mimes a game for the camera:



My expectation that Gretchenji would be so energized from the concert that she would push us extra hard in class the next day did not come to pass however, as class was canceled due to the nor'easter that came through our region that next day.

Sarod and Kathak Concert, December 15

My kathak teacher Gretchen Hayden and her husband, sarodist, George Ruckert, will be performing a concert this Saturday, December 15th at 7:30pm at MIT's Kresge Auditorium. They will be joined by Pandit Ramesh Misra on sarangi and Aditya Kalyanpur on tabla.

Judging from the last Saturday night concert she gave I expect that come Sunday morning, Gretchenji will push us to our very limits during class.

Gretchen Hayden profiled in Boston Globe

This past Saturday, the Boston Globe profiled my kathak teacher, Gretchen Hayden who was performing a concert with the band Natraj that night. While Gretchenji had many a time told us stories about her own training with Chitresh Das, I had never known how it was that she came to kathak dance. Hopefully, the publicity will bring good things to Gretchenji and Chhandika, the school she founded.

Natraj is a Boston-based group that fuses jazz with both Indian classical music and West African traditional repertoire, and includes percussionist Jerry Leake who last month came to our Kathak intensive to discuss the role of tabla and of bols in Hindustani music.

The band takes its name from Shiva's incarnation as the cosmic dancer or "King of the Dance", and so the concert began with an invocation to Shiva, danced and mimed by Gretchenji. Gretchenji returned to the stage to perform with Natraj when they played Hindustani and Hindustani-inspired repertoire, including a comical tale of the young Krishna as a sweet butter thief (which I had seen Gretchenji perform in 2003 before I had become a student one of her students-- indeed a similar story of Krishna by another dancer had been my introduction to the storytelling and mimetic aspects of Indian classical dance.) The concert ended with a complex call and response, in which Gretchenji and Jerry Leake exchanged bols (the verbal notation of rhythmic motifs) whereupon Gretchenji translated these bols into the percussive footwork for which kathak is known and the musicians each responded with improvisations based on these phrases.

The next day, perhaps energized by the concert the night before, Gretchenji presented a more challenging than usual Sunday class. Particularly memorable were the 32 spins or chakkars we had to execute just as we were coming out of a ta thei tata thei a thei tata thei motif. I must be improving as I managed to get somewhere past my 24th chakkar before losing count and finding the momentum had was actually making it difficult stop. Once we did I was far less dizzy than expected. I resolved that I had more bols to recite and memorize before the next class. This week my project has been dha tere kita taka tuna kat dha tere kita taka tuna kat.

Kathak Intensive

Last weekend was the third weekend intensive I have attended since I began studying kathak at Chhandika under the tutelage of Gretchen Hayden. It has been a great undertaking to attempt to learn one of the classical dance forms of India, but what worthy undertaking is not difficult? In the past year, while I am still in the level I classes, I have attained some small amount of technique, confidence, and knowledge. The advantage of the weekend intensives is that it is a way of broadening one's understanding of kathak, often touching on subjects and exercises for which we have little time in our regular Sunday classes.

At one point Gretchenji had us dance tatkar in tintal (a sixteen beat cycle) in a circle, as one by one, one of us had to enter the circle and improvise a rhythmic motif and then return to the tatkar-- it was a circle where I was the only level I student in a room of level II and III students and having far less mastery over far fewer bols than my classmates left me anxious about an exercise that was difficult for many more advanced students, but when pushed to let go of my anxiety, Gretchenji pointed out that the important thing was that I attacked the improvisation with intensity even if my technique has far less developed. Again she taught me the same lesson when the more advanced students had to do a particularly difficult series of chakkars (spins on the heel of the foot-- different from the ballet pirouette which is done on the toe or ball of the foot) while traveling in a straight line across the studio space (difficult even for some advanced students) when it seemed impossible for me, she had me walk the line that the others danced, and I delivered the intensity that has come from my years as a mime. The lesson I took was do not let my awareness of what I don't know prevent me from dancing in the moment.

Later, when joined by some other level I students, we were assigned to develop our own tihais a dance phrase built on the same rhythmic motif or palla repeated three times in this case, a seventeen beat motif created from three five beat phrases with two one beat pauses in between. We had to create, rehearse, and perform our tihai -- again, a challenge to which we were unaccustomed in the level I classes.

Through the weekend we also had the chance to attempt more advanced repertoire like the storytelling from which my interest in Indian classical dance in general, and kathak in particular, first emerged. Appropriately, our intensive being on the taking place during the festival of Diwali (my friend from the blogosphere, Sindhu has posted a piece on Diwali on her blog) one of those stories we worked on was the defeat of the prideful Lord Indra by when Krishna lifted Govardhan hill to shelter the cowherds and their cows and again I realized, that for all my shortcomings with my footwork, I enjoy acting the part of Indra.

The intensive was also an opportunity to have musicians give extended presentations on how tabla, vocal music, and poetry relate to our dance studies, ultimately leading me to better understand how the rhythmic elements of the music relate to movement. Now the matter is getting my feet to learn what my mind is beginning to grasp.

Almost a Year of Kathak

Some of my readers are aware that for much of the past year, I have been studying kathak from Gretchen Hayden of the Chhandika Chhandam Institute of Kathak Dance. Kathak, for those of you who are unfamiliar, is a dance-theatre form (I have read that "dance" is a misnomer resulting from British colonists attempting to translate what they observed into their own categories) that while having ancient roots, began to take its modern form in Northern India and modern day Pakistan, under the influence of the Mughal courts where it took on influences of Persian dance.

Kathak is a classical performance art form in that it conforms to the theories and guidelines of the Natya Shastra written by the sage, Bharata Muni. There appears to be some minor disagreement amongst scholars of whether there are six, seven, or eight schools of dance-theatre that are of classical stature, and since I am not a scholar in the field and have no opinion on the matter.

I had first become aware of Indian dance in general in 2003 when I was present for an informal presentation by foreign student at Open Floor, a sort of workshop and show and tell for movement artists. I immediately saw the formalist storytelling elements, and saw a commonality between Indian dance traditions and European mime (specifically the corporeal mime I had been studying from James Van Looy) as well as the impulse to synthesize movement with poetry-- something I first saw articulated by William J. Barnum. (Cosmic Spelunker Theatre began as a trio between Barnum, Van Looy, and myself.)

I began to seek out every Indian dance concert I saw announced, first becoming aware of Bharatanatyam which developed primarily in Tamil Nadu, before seeing a student show by Chhandika and being exposed to Kathak. I attended a few shows as well as a few open workshops until last fall, when one of the more advanced students noted, "you've been attending our concerts for years and you are a performer, why don't you come study with us?" So I did.

A kathak performance involves a recitation of either a poem or of bols (a composition of syllables used as notation by Indian drummers) while engaged in complex percussive footwork while the upper body mimes the narrative. I was obviously first attracted by the mimetic and poetic elements, but it is the rhythmic footwork that forms the foundation of this dance, and percussion has never been my strong point-- so it has been a steep learning curve for me-- but I have been learning.