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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 12 - 18 October 2000 Issue No. 503 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 12 - 18 October 2000 Issue No. 503
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Elections Palestine International Economy Opinion Culture Books Interview Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters An avatar from the Almighty
By David Blake
Odissi: Classical Indian dance; Cairo Opera House: Small Hall, 2 October
Beauty first and always but, as Socrates said, brains help. Aloka Kanungo has both, so it is joyous and relaxing to write about her. Her unique quality made her performance at the Small Hall which had tough opposition from the mobile circus around the corner at Al-Hanager into an Event of a kind seldom encountered these days.
Beyond the miserable wastes of ordinariness which seem to envelop us are daily miracles of things which sustain and encourage. These are the things we live by, and this dance exhibition was one of them.
Make it colourful, make it grand. Could they with the forces available, a tiny orchestra of three or four and one dancer who must dance almost non-stop alone on stage for one hour and a half with no decor, just lighting variations? They did it, this tiny company, the Odissi from Orissa, a state in east India, and did it so well it belonged because of its grandeur and stately movement to the Main not the Small Hall.
It began as Aloka Kanungo appeared suddenly from the deep shadows of a blacked-out stage. Her entrance was like an announcement of the colour green. The Odissi had made it grand, and the colour was green, and green it would remain until the end as Aloka never changed her costume. Green takes on all shades like a pearl. So this stately figure, alone and irradiated from dark deeps to palest nascent pastel tints, took the small stage and devoured it. We were witnessing the arrival of the ultimate voyager, an avatar from the Almighty, and she would not, for sure, be let down.
The presence of green, the colour of the ultimate voyager, was there before us in Aloka's person ready to interpret all demands, and they proved to be surprisingly different form the usual Indian dance we see in the West. It was never sharp or thrusting like much of classical Indian dance or illustrative. It was a sort of essence of movement related, in the case of this performer, to four different aspects of the dance as it has evolved from the state of Orissa from ancient times. It is thousands of years old, and its legends and attitudes are seen in many of India's oldest, most beautiful temples. What we saw as the dancer made expansive and embracing movements was a welcome to the classical mode of the Orissan dance.
Aloka Kanungo
The second dance, called Pallavi, is pure dance, and it enabled the audience to watch at ease a really great performer. Aloka Kanungo is a beauty; she strikes across the theatre space in full force. Her entire body clad in emerald green -- Colombian, deep, dangerously shining like a force of special energy, a presence of its own -- the dancer displayed her grandest arches of movement like the sweep of noble architecture. The music accompaniment is original, not like the usual sound which comes from an Indian orchestra. It is deeper, very serene and not too suggestive of pantomimic dance. The effect is abstract and restful. Nothing is permitted to distract from the dance itself. It is quite non-representational, flat, rather aloof, but it permits an audience the opportunity to watch the dancer.
Aloka has the fine strong arm and wrist movements of the Orissa tradition. They are startlingly lovely. Tiger-like she freezes -- head, shoulders and arms -- into immobility. Then she melts, loosens her entire body, down to the feet. These feet are fleet. She moves across the stage in attitude without the slightest movement of the upper body, like a roller coaster, not a flicker or a tremble. This brought some of the audience to their own feet. They hurried to the end of the theatre to get a better view of this flying deity's feet.
The face has a true star's ability to hold an expression for as long as it is necessary and then to erase it like a puff of face powder. Which piece of this amazing dancer must we watch? The entire impact, if possible.
The colour green shimmered, but never loosened its grip on our imagination. In the third of the four dances, Abhinaya, which means "to carry across," the evening reached the climax of this four-movement symphonic poem. To carry across means expression, and with this dance there is song. The music takes an entirely different sound: sharp, then suddenly dreamy, grandiose and dramatic. The face and hands of the dancer are called upon to suggest the mood of the music.
Far more vividly than so often in Indian ballet, Aloka Kanungo proves herself to be a positively cinematic mind. She has little time to suggest much. All her movements therefore have to be perfectly formed, and in the fourth movement, Mokshya, she has reached the end of the poem. There is a momentous pause, a lull in the gentle, expansive tone of the music. The dancer arches her whole body into a curved bridge of form. Then begins the descent to the stage floor. The end has been achieved, and she slides into a last obeisance, ready to begin the voyage which perforce we are all to take on this ultimate voyage The last thing we see are the hands, their gentle flutter stilled at last. And so the green voyage is ended -- and just beginning.
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