Tagore revisits Indonesia through dance drama `Chitrangada'

By Linda Owens

JAKARTA (JP): The legacy of Indian culture in Indonesia endures in the language, in the literature, in the architecture and in the performing and visual arts. As an Indian, Dr. Nilanjana Mukherjee was struck by these similarities when she first came to Indonesia to work as a nutrition expert.

Over the course of the last two years, she has come to discover even deeper interlinking currents between the two cultures' ideologies and philosophies. Out of this was born the idea of a joint Indonesian-Indian creative experiment, based on the dance drama Chitrangada, penned by the late Indian poet- philosopher Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941).

Besides contributing numerous novels, poems and essays to the already rich Bengali literary tradition (and earning a Nobel prize along the way), Tagore also wrote popular dance dramas.

Chitrangada is one of these dramas and is inspired by the rich literary tradition of the Mahabharata epic. The epic made its way to Indonesia and lives on in the performing tradition of wayang.

Tagore believed that dance, music and art must be a part of the education of a fully developed human. He made that vision a reality in the 1920s when he established Vishwa-Bharati, an elementary through to university level school for the arts, at Shantiniketan in the province of West Bengal.

The guiding philosophy behind Vishwa-Bharati University, as it is now known, has attracted artists of many nations, including the famous Indonesian painter Affandi. Dr. Nilanjana studied for a short time at Vishwa-Bharati as well, though she claims the greatest part of Tagore's influence on her came from reading and hearing his works in her youth.

Devotional

Chitrangada is performed in the classic Odissi dance style which, according to Nilanjana, performs a devotional function, representing the symbolic union of humanity and the Godhead. As she describes it, Odissi is a "celebration of the female form, a peculiar combination of sensuality and devotion." She began to study the Odissi style in 1987 under Guru Hare Krishna Behera, though this was certainly not her first foray into the art; she began learning the north Indian Kathak style of at age four.

Chitrangada is a tale which retains plenty of relevance even today. The warrior princess Chitrangada is smitten with the great Pandava warrior Arjuna, but lacking the feminine graces, she is spurned by him. She invokes the god of love and obtains the gift of dazzling beauty, and with it, wins the heart of Arjuna.

Realizing their love is based on illusion, though, she returns her boon. She challenges her beloved to look beyond mere beauty, and recognize and accept her for her true self. The innovative Tagore adapted Odissi style movements into a contemporary version of this classic story of the ideal male-female relationship, taken from the Mahabharata .

Once she formed the idea to stage this inter-cultural dance production, an association for Indonesian-Indian cultural exchange called Abhyudaya made contact with the Sanggar Tari Kencana Indah School of Indonesian Dance, and the creative process began. Nilanjana also obtained the Indian Embassy in Jakarta's support for sending two classically-trained Indian dancers from Calcutta for the performance.

Nilanjana sought to utilize the original strengths of two distinctly different dance styles, Odissi and Balinese, to tell the story. She saw similarities between certain elements of the Odissi grammar of movement and Balinese dance; the three-line division of the dancer's basic body position, for example, as well as the dynamic, rhythmic character of their musical accompaniment.

Her objective, she says, was to "create an aesthetic and ideological synthesis of Indonesian and Indian dance styles" in telling the story of Chitrangada, "without losing the identity of either style."

She and her partners faced several challenges. In Odissi, as in other Indian dance styles, the acting out of emotions is an essential part of the storytelling process. Most Indonesian dances, however, emphasize stylized form, stemming from the Indonesian cultural value of emotional restraint.

Ethereal quality

Nilanjana feels that her Balinese partners add "an ethereal quality," which she says "contrasts beautifully with the earthy sensuality" of the Odissi style. Even so, they did make efforts to incorporate more facial expressions into their roles.

The second, most obvious challenge was overcoming the language barrier. Nilanjana translated Tagore's Bengali lyrics into English, then writer Pangkat Harahap took over and translated them into Bahasa Indonesia . She says the rehearsals occasionally took on a comic aspect as she tried to communicate, in her broken Indonesian, choreographic instructions and the emotions required of the dancers.

She was amazed, however, at their ability to quickly grasp the sequences of movements and expressions. The Balinese dancers were also able to pick up the musical rhythms quite easily. Nilanjana found, though, that the powerful percussion beat tended to get lost. Percussive footfalls provide counterpoint to the tabla's rhythms in Indian dance while Indonesian dance is noted for its light, gliding foot movements.

Nilanjana says she found the whole exercise to be "like designing a large pattern, with two distinct groups of lines, forms and textures," and one which she claims was immensely enjoyable. She believes that what has emerged out of this collaboration retains much of the power and beauty of Tagore's original verses.

When Tagore visited Indonesia in 1927, he was deeply impressed by Indonesian art forms and endeavored, through Vishwa-Bharati, to establish a process of ongoing cultural exchanges with Indonesian artists and scholars.

Chitrangada will be performed on Sept. 11 at Erasmus Huis, under the auspices of the Jawaharlal Nehru Indian Cultural Center of the Indian Embassy in Jakarta, and at Yogyakarta's Taman Budaya on Sept. 17.