REVIEW

Circles and Cycles: Kathak Dance A video by Robert S. Gottlieb. 1989. 28 minutes. Along with Bharata Natyam, the classical solo dance for women of South India, Kathak, the classical solo dance of North India, is one of the world's most exquisite performing arts. Beautifully photographed in 16mm, this video cuts very effectively between dance sequences or commentary and still images from miniature paintings of the dance, photos of old palaces, and portraits of important dancers who are also ancestors of Birju Maharaj, one of the most famous male dancers of recent times. Aside from Birju himself, many of his pupils are featured in brief excerpts illustrating various elements of Kathak style, particularly the two most important features common to many Indian dance genres, abhinaya, or mime, and nrtta, or abstract dance. Initially, abhinaya is illustrated by dancer Saswati Sen portraying one of the milkmaids featured in the stories about Krishna; she demonstrates churning butter and then storing it in a pot hanging from the ceiling (the latter cleverly explained through intercutting with a miniature painting). Immediately thereafter, the second element of pure dance is demonstrated by Daksha Seth, who demonstrates the importance of the dancer's marking the return of the first beat of the rhythmic cycle (tala) with a special posture arrived at with climactic series of movements. Next, Jai Kishan further emphasizes the link between physical movement and the rhythm of the music as realized on the drum by reciting rhythmic syllables (bol) also used by drummers and then executing them in movement. Shovana Narayan appears next with a brief excerpt of storytelling involving Radha's anger at the infidelity of her divine lover, Krishna, which is accompanied by an effective voiceover explaining the meaning of the gestures. The most significant sequence, however, captures the great master of the recent past, Birju Maharaj, in a performance that is now virtually obsolete and which was always suited only to the private performances of the court and salon rather than the contemporary stage. Instead of dancing in the usual sense, Birju performs seated, using only his facial expressions and arm movements to interpret a few lines of a lyric-erotic song, a thumri. While the text is brief, it suggests many variants to the performer who improvises at his leisure while singing and rearranging the phrases of the tune. A mention of clouds, typically associated with the cool and romantic monsoon, brings forth a series of gestures such as combing of the hair, which billows like clouds, or lighting a lamp whose smoke accumulates and floats like clouds. This excerpt alone makes the film an historically important document. Despite the high quality of the film production, the excellence of the artistic personnel, and a cameo appearance by the tabla superstar Zakir Hussain as narrator, the full potential of this film has not quite been realized because of the somewhat disconnected way in which its various components are linked. In a film of 28 minutes, one can only hope to stir the interest of the viewer to seek more information and fuller examples. This the video will certainly do, but it could have been more effective in its attempt to characterize the art by presenting fewer, and lengthier, excerpts by one or two dancers instead of many very brief snippets by a succession of dancers. It is, nevertheless, a useful introduction to the basic elements of the history and technique of one of the world's greatest dance traditions. For college or high-school courses that deal with the performing arts, this could make an effective contribution to the inclusion of non-western materials, especially if the instructor has access to supplementary material like Sunil Kothari's beautifully illustrated overview of the genre in his Kathak: Indian Classical Dance Art (Abhinav Publications: 1989). To use this documentary most effectively, the teacher should pause frequently in order to elaborate on what has been illustrated and to make sure that the point of an excerpt has been absorbed before proceeding to the next. In this way, some of the continuity lacking in the film can be supplied by interacting with it.