No Drama Japanese Architecture Pantomime Fan J Har Y K Theatre

THEATRE, NO DRAMA ; JAPANESE ARCHITECTURE ; PANTOMIME; FAN.) (J. HAR. ; Y. K.) The Dramatic Dance.—Dancing and the drama in India are inseparable. The same words nata, nati, actor, actress, also designate dancer, danseuse; and a theatre (ndtya-sald, vesma) is equally a dancing stage. The classic Indian theatre is a thing of the past, with perhaps some exceptions in the south, but its technique survives in the modern "nautch" (ndc). Dancing is of three sorts, according to the content, and two according to style. Ndtya is dancing used in a drama (ndtaka) as part of the plot (the word ndtayati, "gesturing," or "acting as if," is a regular stage di rection whenever a particular action or mood is to be portrayed) ; nrtya is dancing that expounds a theme by means of explicit gestures; nrtta is dancing to music, but without a definite theme, and includes folk (deli) dancing. The first two are of the same character. Beyond this, tdndava is a masculine and vigorous style of dancing ; lasya a feminine and graceful style.

The dance in its higher forms (nrtya), as distinguished from merely decorative, and from the folk-dance, is a sort of panto mime in which a story is told, or events or persons alluded to, by means of formal gestures (aiagikdbhinaya) presented in a rhythmic sequence and accompanied by singing and instrumental music ; it is a kind of visible poetry with a definite meaning. Treatises on dancing are essentially dictionaries of gesture defin ing certain positions and movements of the head, neck, eyes and, above all, the hands; the latter are particularly used to convey explicit meanings, the head and eyes to express emotions. A single "hand," for example, the "flag" (patdka) hand, in which the fingers are extended in contact as when giving a slap, may have twenty or more meanings, depending on the way in which it is moved or the position in which it is held, and on the context of preceding and following "hands." In this kind of dancing the movement of the lower limbs is restricted to a quite subordinate rhythmic accompaniment; the dancer may indeed be seated.

The dance is accompanied by singing (by the dancer or by a chorus) and by instruments (usually in the north a sdraiagi and drums, in the south a tambura and drums). The whole course of the dance may be summarized as follows : "The song should be sustained in the throat ; its meaning must be shown by the hands; the mood must be shown by the glances; rhythm is marked by the feet. For wherever the hand moves, there the glances fol low; where the glances go, the mind follows ; where the mind goes, the mood follows; where the mood goes, there is the flavour." (Coomaraswamy and Duggirala, Mirror of Gesture.) Dance Songs.—The songs of bayaderes are the lauds and songs of devotion of classical poets ; the theme of their dances, the deeds of Krsna, and the interplay of hero and heroine with their esoteric meaning. All conditions in India are penetrated and illuminated by a devotional culture. Three examples of songs, sung by the dancer while dancing and forming the theme of the dance, may be quoted: the first from northern India (Mathurd) , the second from the south (Tanjore), the third with an antiquity of a millennium and a half : Left all alone, my darling gone to another land, how can I pass the days and nights ? Left all alone, wringing both her hands, left all alone The rainy season has begun, the lightning flashes, the night is dark, left all alone, Senseless is my darling, my bed lies empty, left all alone ! It should be explained that it is usual to abandon warlike operations during the rainy season; hence, if a man has not at that time returned, the suffering of the woman left at home is intensified by every reminder of the time when he should have been expected. In the actual dance, which is one of those that can suitably be performed seated, not only is the emotional expe rience clearly expressed, but the rain, the lightning and the dark night can all be represented.

The words of a Tanjore song are descriptive of Visnu: Is he the great being who rides on Garuda ? Is he the great being who sleeps on a snake ? Is he the great being who lifted Mt. Govardhana upon his little finger ? Is he the great being who assumed the form of the Fish Avatar ? The avatars of Visnu are then given successively.

The words of Malavika's dance in Kalidasa's classical Sanskrit play, the Malavikdgnimitra (Act ii.) are as follow: My beloved is hard to obtain, be thou without hope with respect to him, 0 my heart ! But lo, I feel a throbbing in the outer corner of my left eye' ; How then is this man, seen only after a long time, to be won ? My Lord, reflect that I am devoted to thee with ardent longing ! The stage direction, Iti yatheirasam abhinayati, is "She gestures in accordance with the flavour (or sentiment)." Like Indian music, the dance form begins and ends, from a Western point of view, unexpectedly : there is no emotional crisis, no excitement. Above all, it is not an exposition of the dancer's 'A good omen.

personality. Aesthetic experience, from the Indian point of view, is the work of the spectator ; all that the artist can do is to pro vide the conditions. The dance is in no way strange or exotic to the Indian audience ; its continuous rhythm, which can be more nearly paralleled in Western art by the music of Bach than by that of Beethoven, leads the spectator not away from himself, but far into himself. It is just because the visible spectacle is not insist ent, not something to be curiously observed, but something that penetrates beyond the threshold of consciousness to the inner world of each beholder, that it can be watched for many hours without fatigue. Circumstantially, of course, the dance is more varied than at first it seems to be; for example, not only do the themes of successive dances change, but with every hour of the night the modes of the accompanying music must change, in ac cordance with a well-understood convention. It is not this varia tion, however, that explains the lack of monotony; that is due to a quality inherent in the art itself, whereby the spectator loses consciousness of the passage of time. It will be understood that this is not an art which can be transported to a foreign land ; and perhaps the only opportunity that Europeans in Europe have ever had to witness oriental dancing was when King Sisowath brought his Cambodian dancers to Marseille and Paris.

Aesthetic Experience.

Mention has been made above of flavour in Indian aesthetics. Flavour (rasa) is that emotional quality which distinguishes a work of art from a mere statement, and aesthetic emotion from the emotions experienced in daily life. To the Indian, the dance, like any other art, has a spiritual significance independent of its theme or charm, for "by clearly expressing the flavour, and enabling men to taste thereof, it gives them the wisdom of Brahma, whereby they may understand how every business is unstable ; from which indifference to such busi ness, and therefrom, arise the highest virtues of peace and patience, and thence again may be won the bliss of Brahma." The so-called oriental dancing of the European stage is in almost all respects unlike the dancing of the East where, for example, the dancer is always more, and not less, fully clothed than are other women in daily life, and where, if there be in the dance some erotic allusion, this not only has a definite significance, but is made in such a way as entirely to escape the notice of a western audience. The movements of the so-called oriental dancers of the West are indeed sinuous; but the fluidity of east ern movement is something far more than this. It is not even serpentine, but more like the wreathing of smoke. Nothing in India corresponds to the ball-room dancing of Europe and Amer ica; the mixed dancing of this kind is shocking to Indian ideas of propriety.

Education.

Dancers (female) are to a certain extent trained (Plate I., figs. 3, 4) by performers of their own caste and sex, but more especially by male dancing-masters, Brahmans, who are familiar with the literature as well as the practice of the art. Ganadasa speaks of the art as "a pleasing sacrificial feast to the eyes of the gods . . . and the one chief amusement of human beings." He exhibits his pupil Malavika before the king, queen and certain courtiers. Her performance is adjudged perfect in the following terms : "All was blameless, and in accordance with the rules of art ; for the meaning was completely expressed by her [upper] limbs, which were full of language, while the move ment of her feet was in perfect time, and she represented the moods to perfection. . . . In the successive developments of the acting, emotion kept banishing emotion from its place ; it was a vivid picture of a series of passions" (Malavikagnirnitra, Act. ii.).

An account of the education of a dancer is found in the Tamil Silappadigaram, ch. iii. She is initiated in her fifth year by means of the tandiyampidipittu ceremony. Here a horizontal rod, wound about with flowers and a new cloth, is held by two dancers. The new pupil, bringing offerings of coconut, betel leaves, etc., and standing on grains of rice, symbolizing plenty, touches the rod with folded hands, repeating verses chanted by the instructor in honour of Ganapati and Jayanta. At the same time the instructor holds the pupil's feet and moves them according to the steps of the dances, and anklets with bells are placed on the ankles. This is a life dedication to the calling of a dancer. Instruction is begun in her seventh year, and must last at least five years. The theoretical part is usually given by a Brahman teacher, the prac tical exercises by an elderly and retired danseuse. In her twelfth year the pupil may appear in public and the teacher receives a reward.

Domingo Paes, writing about 152o, describes a room in the Vijayanagar palace in which the royal dancers practised and per formances were given. On one side was "a painted recess where the women cling on with their hands in order better to stretch and loosen their bodies and legs." Presumably there was a hori zontal rod against the wall, like that used by modern ballet dancers for practice. At the other end of the room was the place occupied by the king during a performance, and in the middle of the wall was a golden image of a woman, or rather girl of years, with her arms in the position taken at the end of a dance.

Generally speaking, the costume of a dancer does not differ markedly from that of local fashion, except by its greater rich ness. One part of it, the bells, however, is special and essential: a string of these, a hundred or two hundred in number, is bound round the ankles at the time of dancing, and the sound of these bells, as the dancer moves her feet in time, forms part of the music. When the dancer ties them on before dancing, she will invariably touch them to her eyes and forehead and murmur a brief prayer, and those who are learned in the lore of dancing say that "that dancing is vulgar and inauspicious which the actress does not begin with prayer." Like other vocations in India, that of music, dancing and acting is in the main an hereditary profession. There have always been and still are some Brahmans and others of high caste who are expert both in the theory and practice of music, but the profes sion as practised by members of special castes has always had a low social status. At the present day the "Anti-Nautch move ment" represents an endeavour to boycott the professional dances on puritanical grounds (with reference to the morals of the dancers, not to the character of the dance). It is desired to ban ish the danseuse alike from private and public entertainments and from all connection with temple service.