Adaptation of Bharatanatyam dance pedagogy for multicultural classrooms: questions and relevance in a North American university setting

Abstract

This article opens up questions around introducing Bharatanatyam, a form of Indian classical dance, to undergraduate learners within a North American university setting. The aim is to observe how the learners understood and received a particular cultural practice and to explore issues related to learning goals, curriculum content, approaches to pedagogy and classroom management. A qualitative approach used the combined methods of action research, ethnography and autoethnography to reveal layers of meanings related to the nature of learning and challenges incurred in implementing traditional teaching method into practice. It is discussed how critical spaces for dialogue and deliberation between the learners and the teacher have generated an adaptive method for accommodating the needs of multicultural classrooms. The study recommends further inquiry-based dialogues among scholars and practitioners to utilise the critical theories for classroom instructions.

Keywords:

• Bharatanatyam teaching–learning
• multicultural dance education
• guru–shishya method
• adaptive dance pedagogy
• critical pedagogy
• constructivist pedagogy

Acknowledgement

I am thankful to Janice Baker and all the students of ISU Dance for their co-operation. I am grateful to Linda Rolfe, the past editor of this journal, for her consistent support throughout the writing effort, my PhD supervisors (Andrée Grau and Avanthi Meduri) for providing constructive comments at a critical stage and Andrew Wilkins for his editorial help. Special thanks to Susan W. Stinson for her insightful inputs during my visits to the University of North-Carolina, Greensboro in 2006–9. In addition, I wish to acknowledge the (two anonymous) reviewers whose intelligent comments helped me to improve on an earlier draft.

Notes

1. Bharatanatyam is renamed and revived from the ancient sadir tradition of solo dance practised by the temple dancers. For a detailed historical, cultural, political and global perspectives on Bharatanatyam, see Meduri (1996, 2004, 2008a, 2008b), O’Shea (1999, 2003, 2006, 2007), Gaston (1996), Srinivasan (1983, 1985) and Soneji (2010). For having an overview on its repertory and other interdisciplinary aspects, see Kliger (1993).

2. The guru–shishya method is the ancient Indian popular discourse that is still regarded as the traditional method of transmission of knowledge for the dissemination of performing arts for many generations. See Gaston (1996), Kothari (2002) for a detailed historical and cultural framework of this system. See Ananya (1996), Chanana (2007) and Prickett (2007) for teaching–learning issues in recent times.

3. Limited available literature survey and online resources suggest that Bharatanatyam dance scholar-performers have introduced theoretical courses in various American universities. Avanthi Meduri, a Bharatanatyam dance scholar and researcher, during her teaching appointment at the Department of Performance Studies, Northwestern University in late 90s had developed six interdisciplinary courses using multiple contexts (see Meduri 2004). Janet O’Shea, who is trained and widely published on Bharatanatyam dance, is currently engaged in teaching undergraduate and post-graduate courses in South Asian Dance Histories at the University of California, Los Angeles. Priya Srinivasan, a scholar-performer of Bharatanatyam, has published articles and a book that investigates the interrelations between immigration, citizenship, labour and the dancing body in the USA and Asian diaspora. Currently she teaches at the University of California, Riverside (Srinivasan 2011).

4. I have used the term ‘multicultural classroom’ from Witsel (2008, 17) who defines it as a setting ‘where the academic and the students are of differing cultures’.

5. Here I prefer to use the term ‘traditional method’ to specify the technique which is handed over from the teacher to the disciple without any change of sequence or format. Sometimes guru–shishya method is used synonymously as the traditional teaching method.

6. Orchesis II is a non-audition dance company whose membership is open to all registered students from the ISU, as well as persons interested in dancing. It disseminates dance genres including tap, hip-hop, modern, jazz, Latin, and others by providing performance opportunities for its members. See http://sodb.stuorg.iastate.edu/view.php?id=361.

7. ‘Half-sari’ is popularly known in the dance circles as a cotton dress that is worn by females during the dance practices or learning sessions in Kalakshetra, an art academy situated in Chennai. It is worn over loose fitting lightweight pants with a blouse. A dhoti is the traditional men's garment worn for practice classes and performances.

8. In Bharatanatyam, nritta is the delineation of measured, coordinated human movement and the rendering of a specific pose in a given time (Vatsyayan 1992, 14). Alarippu, jatiswaram and thillana are considered nritta-based items in the repertoire of Bharatanatyam.

9. Araimandi or ardhamandali is the basic posture of Bharatanatyam dance in which the knees are bent sideways and both the arms are extended out and placed firmly on the waist.

10. Natta means ‘to stretch’. Natta adavu is a series of movements that is characterised by the stretching of feet following stamping and bringing it back to the original position. It is rendered with syllables which are set to a cycle of eight beats.

11. The basic posture of a Bharatanatyam danseuse is designed as the integration of many triangles (Vatsyayan 1992).

12. Surekha – the beautiful lines was commissioned for Amend ‘Barjche’, the annual festival of ISU Dance, in 2006. This piece was choreographed and performed as three consecutive days at the Fisher Theatre, ISU campus. It is inspired from the aesthetic concepts of line drawings and philosophical concept of ‘rekha’ from sanskritic dance tradition and set to a traditional Carnatic musical composition.

13. Bloom, originally inspired from alarippu, is a solo dance choreographed using the idioms of Bharatanatyam. The music is composed by Bjoern Vogelsang from Steeldrum, Bochum, Germany and it had its debut in Dortmund, Germany in 2004.

14. Alarippu is an invocatory piece from the repertory of Bharatanatyam performed in obeisance to gods. For more details, see Van Zile (1983) .

15. The devadasi-s became constituents of the temple as brides and devotional servants to the deity who danced Sadir in the Southern part of India. See Srinivasan (1983, 1985) and Meduri (1996) for a broad socio-cultural perspectives on this system and their practices.

16. Bharatanatyam – What are you? by Meduri (2001) and ‘Traditional’ Indian Dance and the Making of Interpretive Communities by O’Shea (1998) were distributed.

17. A padam is a lyrical poetry that narrates emotions of a character. See Kylas , Allen and Poursine (1991) for more details.

18. Tala, in Indian musical terminology, is a cycle organised into measures which provides a rhythmic framework for musical composition and improvisation. Each measure of tala contains the same number of pulse-beats and its first beat of which is generally accented. Some common Carnatic tala-s are: Adi (eight beats); Rupakam (six beats); Mishra Chapu (seven beats); and Khanda Chapu (five beats).

19. A binary cyclic metre of eight beats which is typified by a traditional pattern of hand movements for each unit of time during each cycle and claps are executed on beats one, five and seven.

20. The verse no. 36 of Abhinayadarpanam by Nandikeshwara is translated by Coomaraswamy in his The Mirror of Gesture as follows:‘For wherever the hand moves, there the glances follow; where the glances go, the mind follows; where the mind goes, the mood follows; where the mood goes, there is the flavour’ (1977, 17). This verse was taught to all Bharatanatyam dance students as a maxim of performance aesthetics. In all these residencies, the learners practised it with gestures using this above translation.