Distilling over forty years of pioneering work into one three-hour long performance is no easy feat when you’ve as celebrated an oeuvre as the Bharatam Dance Company, and as illustrious a presence as Dr Chandrabhanu OAM.
But Bharatam Reprise, a one-weekend-only revival of the Bharatam Dance Company’s most iconic pieces at Darebin Arts Centre, was a fitting homage to the enduring magic of Australia’s first state and federally funded Indian classical arts company.
Aligned with the 75th birthday of the company’s central figure Dr Chandrabhanu, Bharatam Reprise saw nine young graduates of the Chandrabhanu Bharatalaya Academy resurrect a selection of Bharatam’s repetoire 25 years after the company’s closure as a tribute to their cherished guru Mamu.
Under the tutelage of original Bharatam cast member Ambika Docherty, carefully selected classic Bharatam dances from Navagraha: The Planets of Destiny (1991), Shakti: Goddess (1993), Savitri (1998), The Dance of Shiva (1989) and their Dance in Education program were placed in the hands of capable young successors, who Dr Chandrabhanu says approached the task with commendable dedication.
“In the old days, with Bharatam, we were salaried, it was our job. These dancers now, they’re doing it out of their own interest, and they raised the funds themselves,” he says. “That attitude is very impressive; I have inculcated into them the love of the art form and the subject matter. I’m very proud of the fact that they’re all mature dancers.”
Dr Chandrabhanu’s lifelong legacy resists simple definition, of course, and would require just as long to accurately traverse; the man himself is keen to emphasise his complexity when asked to summarise the secret ingredient behind their stature.
However, a striking feature amongst all of Dr Chandrabhanu’s works is an appreciation of how life and art intersect.
“The knowledge that I teach is not just dance, and I think all my students know that – this dance is about life. It’s not just that you get up on the stage to have a pretty smile and wear beautiful costumes. The life experience you bring to the performance is important,” Dr Chandrabhanu says.
“I think this is what art is. In the end, it is a reflection of life, or what life could be.”
It’s a sensibility visible in his signature piece, Divakara Tanujam; as someone born under Saturn, he expresses an affinity to the ill-reputed Lord Sani, and even at the age of 75 insists on performing this dance himself.
“The dances I used to do when I was younger have transformed themselves through me because I’m now 75…I have to approach it from a 75 year old’s point of view,” he says. “When one gets old, there are things your body cannot do, but the psyche of the works remain. You have to understand that at this age, you are expressing it in a different way. Dance, after all is not just a physical thing, it’s the dancing mind.”
Though he originally dreamed of being a singer, Dr Chandrabhanu came to Bharatanatyam through listening to the mesmerising rhythms of Carnatic music as a child in Penang. These days he is many things – a choreographer, a teacher, an anthropologist, a lover of textiles, an academic – a plurality of identities influencing his practice.
“All these interests merge in the way I choreograph; they’re like information that goes to put together what a Chandrabhanu work is like,” he says.
“When my guru looked at my academic activities, he said, ‘use them for whatever we’re doing.’ That influence has been very strong for me, and I’m very happy to see the generations of dancers I have trained have actually adopted that – they need to know how the dancing is relevant to them personally, and to the society and community.”
As one of the first exponents of Indian classical arts in 1970’s Australia, Dr Chandrabhanu is an iconoclast whose work spoke to people from all walks of life. Bharatam’s own four core members – Arun Munoz, Ambika Docherty, Tina Yong and Dr Chandrabhanu – came from a variety of backgrounds, a testament to the transcendent and universal power of the form and collective themes of their artistic exploration.
“I teach my students this – whatever space you dance in, you need to be able to affect that space with something else, which is the space within you, to influence the audience’s experience of you. When I dance, what I’m doing is making the audience feel as if they are dancing,” he says.
Founded in 1983, Bharatam paved the way for cross-cultural understanding during multicultural Australia’s infancy, achieving a level of commercial and critical success amongst a non-South Asian audience hitherto unheard of for a traditional form.
As vanguards of South Asian art in Australia, much of the effort at this time went towards the education of audiences.
“Sometimes people who didn’t understand where the art form came from, or weren’t willing to do any research on it, would say we were a religious cult because we danced about Hindu gods – it can’t be relevant to contemporary Australia because it’s religious,” Dr Chandrabhanu remembers. “If you look at the history of most cultures in the world, the arts all originally came from a religious or spiritual source.”
“When I made Medea, critics had a field day…They said ‘Chandrabhanu has turned himself to contemporary theatre’. I said ‘I’m making a work which was presented nearly 2500 years ago at a religious ceremony, just as most [Bharatanatyam dances] were part of temple culture, but today we perform them in theatres. But you don’t call Medea a religious work, do you?’”
These days, Dr Chandrabhanu says, with the influx of South Asian Australians nostalgic for the homeland, classical arts have taken a new shape amongst the diaspora.
“For many of the people who are living here now, there is this fear they’re going to lose their culture, particularly in the culture that is going to be adopted by their children. In a sense, many of my students [were] sent to me to be educated,” he says.
“So much respect is given to me for being able to pass on my cultural knowledge, but what sometimes I am amused by is that I’m not just teaching them a traditional art form with traditional ideas – I’m very much an iconoclast. I’m talking to [these young girls growing up] about issues to do with women. I’m very proud of the fact that most of the people I have trained (who are women) have taken that on – we have minds of our own.”
Amidst a new generation grappling with modern multicultural concerns, Dr Chandrabhanu is excited to see how his works stand the test of time.
“My students are the future. In time, whatever they will do, perhaps they will also do it in their own way; that’s up to them. I’m not so concerned that my works would change with each generation. What matters is that they imbibe the seriousness and research into the works that I have undertaken over these years.”
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