Seeta Patel: Something Then, Something Now

Seeta Patel, Something Then, Something Now, Lilian Baylis Theatre, September 25

Seeta Patel in Something Then, Something Now (photo © Stephen Berkeley White)

Wild Card is a series of specially curated evenings from a new generation of dance makers bringing fresh perspectives to the stage. For each Wild Card, an up-and-coming artist is given the opportunity to present work that excites them alongside their own.

Something Then, Something Now is both the title of Seeta Patel’s Wild Card evening and a way of understanding it. The evening is divided into two, with Patel dancing a Bharatanatyam solo to live Carnatic music in the first, and Pushkala Gopal performing a series of Abhinaya — the facial, gestural and character aspects of the Bharatanatyam tradition — with the some of the same Carnatic musicians in the second. In both cases, the compositions originate in the past (between the twelfth and the eighteenth centuries) but the interpretations are very much in the moment. Because both the artist and the art form are inextricably linked, we are not simply watching historical compositions reconstructed for the present: it is the past in the ever-present that makes the evening so rich.

Patel is one of a new generation of dancers who are born in England of Indian parents but she is considered an Indian dancer because she looks Indian and she dances an Indian form. Identity is something Patel has already tackled with playful irony in a short film she made with Kamala Devam, The Art of Defining Me, but for her Wild Card program she sets out to dispel the equally equivocal notion that Indian dance is an exotic, ethnic import. She sees Bharatanatyam as a classical form in the same way, perhaps, that Beethoven’s or Rossini’s music is part of the classical tradition independent of its cultural origin. It is a differentiation that may be lost on those who thrive on compartmentalization but for the two packed houses at her Wild Card program, the freshness of her approach and the quality of her dancing are indisputable.

Lighting designer Guy Hoare creates a cocoon of hazy light that engulfs the musicians seated at one side of the stage in the preamble to the performance. The violinist’s sliding fingers, the flautist’s swaying torso, the percussionist’s lightning fingers on the taut skin and the vocalist’s rich voice all prefigure Patel’s dance. Mavin Khoo, who sits with the musicians as conductor and vocal percussionist, half explains, half intones the story of praise and love Patel is about to dance, after which Hoare lowers the lights to prepare us for her entrance: first her hand and then her arm, then her entire body appear through a thin sheet of light. For the next fourty minutes Hoare integrates Patel’s dance and the Carnatic music into an intoxicating drama of mystery and light.

The focus of this eighteenth century work from the Raga Anandabhairavi is the relationship between three characters (the heroine, her friend and Lord Krishna) and the dual nature of love and devotion. Patel as the heroine and sole narrator is exquisitely beautiful, dressed in a turquoise costume accented with filigree gold and adorned with jewels that themselves seem to dance in the light. She uses her richly expressive facial features to convey the full spectrum of feeling and emotion and her graceful hand and arm gestures symbolize the motifs and details of her story.

Throughout the dance there is a heady sense of improvisation between Patel and the musicians that requires a heightened musicality from both. I don’t want to take my eyes off her, and the musicians never do. Between the narrative sections are the pure dance or rhythmical sections in which she becomes one with the music like a human instrument. Her rapid footwork, darting arm gestures and fast — unbelievably fast — turns are nevertheless clear and fully articulated as if there is a still point within her around which, and from which, everything moves. No wonder Anna Pavlova recognized the parallels between Indian dance and classical ballet.

In the second part of the evening, Pushkala Gopal sits authoritatively on a platform surrounded by the same group of Carnatic musicians with Divya Kasturi as an additional vocalist. Abinhaya are performed to explore texts written mostly, Gopal says in her introduction, by men fascinated by heroines in love. Her gestures arrive out of the words and the layers of meaning in the song. As in Patel’s dance, the symbiotic relationship between Gopal and the musicians is exhilarating.

The final song is about an Untouchable whose interest in seeing Lord Shiva is so pure that he succeeds against all odds in achieving his goal. It is appropriate that such a story should conclude the evening in which Patel has put her talent and passion at the service of an art form she wants to champion in this country. Patel is, to our eyes, an accomplished dancer but in the timeline of her art she can be seen as just a beginner, as Khoo — her teacher — pointed out in the post-show talk. It is lifelong artistic investment that lies at the heart of classical art, but with a public funding system that cannot look with confidence beyond the five-year political cycle there seems little hope of an enduring solution. Great art for all requires great artists, and great artists can’t mature on a fast-food project basis. But if an untouchable can see Lord Shiva then we can look forward to enjoying Patel’s long-term development in her chosen art.