Cultures: An Egyptian dervish named Hanni Amin

Hanni Amin spins his magic

(This piece was in print in 2005)

A WHIRLING dervish doesn't often dance for an audience of three. Yet, there we stand amidst the lush greenery at Hotel Atria on a sunny Friday morning, taking in the spectacular spins, swirls and moves of Hanni Amin, a traditional Egyptian dervish. Stunned by his dance as communication with the Almighty, we await his real performance at Guru Nanak Bhavan that evening. 

Hanni is central to the five-member Egyptian Al-Tannoura troupe that flew in from Cairo. Guests of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), their maiden Indian performance was at Bangalore.

Clad in a gold-embroidered black jacket, layered over green pyjamas and a shirt, Hanni begins slowly. His three-tiered, multi-hued skirts catch the eye of the sun as he gains momentum, begins to turn — as his accompanists sing, their cadences matched to the flute and an unusual Egyptian drum. They are clad in long white garments over loose pyjamas, crimson diagonal sashes across their attire.

Hanni balances four coloured tambourine-like pieces in his hands. He juggles them as he changes rhythm. They change formation. He twists and swoops, his arms stretch out as he tosses them away one by one.

And then, Hanni's topmost skirt begins to spin, higher and higher, at a dizzying pace. It floats about his neck, still swirling as he controls its trajectory. It rises to his crown, still a rotating whirligig of colour. We feel dizzy at the spectacle; he doesn't for a moment. Hanni's dance as an instant messaging service is stunning. A multi-pronged Sufi prayer in motion.

We long to speak to Hanni. But he speaks no English, and we have not a word of Arabic. So, we try to bridge the cultural divide through Mahmud Eissa Ahmed Ali, the Al-Tannoura delegation head.

En route to New Delhi for the Third International Sufi Festival from March 10 to 15, they are looking forward to interacting through dance song and qawwali with artistes from Morocco, Iran, Sudan and Bangladesh, besides India. But Ali is disappointed that we could not access the full glory of their 52-member, 1988-launched, government-sponsored troupe.

"You know, the darawish (or dervish) in Egypt, in Sufi culture, is the core. Like the sun, he spins in the centre. At least 15 other dervishes dance around him in a clockwise direction like the planets, like the pilgrims at the Kaaba," explains Ali, in halting English. "And yes, Sufism draws from the beliefs of Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi."

Thrice weekly, the Al-Tannoura troupe performs at Cairo's citadel of Salauddin, a spectacular sight for the local population. "The dervish is expressing the music, the words, his feelings, while communicating with Allah," stresses Ali. "He feels heavy, heavy, heavy as he dances. His outstretched arms are trying to connect the ground and the sky. He is always ready to fly... "

What does the dervish signify? "Whether he dances in solitary splendour in the desert or in the village square, his is an act of total communication and devotion. He is part of all Egyptian public celebrations, like the birthday of the Prophet," says Ali. "As he whirls, he chants Allah, Allah, Allah... "

Was his costume always so spectacular? "Not quite," Ali confesses. "Traditionally, the dervish was dressed only in pure white for zekr or the prayer dance. But this is more for the performance. By the way, the inscriptions across the red sashes of his musicians read `Only one God' in front. And `Mohammed is the Prophet' on the reverse."

Can the dervish withstand the onslaught of modernity on Egyptian society? "Of course," insists Ali. "We have 11 boys, each about seven years old, who are training to be dervishes at our institute. But that does not mean they can skip school... "

As the Al-Tannoura troupe, which has been to Japan and China, Singapore and Australia, sets its trajectory towards the US, Canada and Venezuela in the future, Ali puts the dervish in perspective, "Hanni's father and grandfather were dervishes. His son is one, too. It's a tradition that will never die out."

 (The Hindu Metroplus 2005)

Dance: Aditi Mangaldas ~ Futuristic footwork

(Note: This interview dates back to 2004)

ADITI Mangaldas’ footwork is impeccable ~ every step creates syllables of communication, every beat resonates with inner rhythms. Yet, her five-member dance company seemed out of sync with traditional Kathak at the Attakkalari Bangalore Biennial of movement arts in mid-February. Were they seeking horizons beyond the royal courts and performance spaces it was born of 5,000 years ago? At the closing performance of India’s only contemporary dance festival, she challenged traditional bastions with her three-piece presentation.

Mangaldas’ London-premiered July 2003 piece lyrically explores the textures of silence, drawing on yoga as a performance art. ‘Lament,’ a solo sparked by Pablo Neruda’s poetry, threads through the eternity of love, but in an idiom struggling to find a new voice.

What does Kathak mean today to New Delhi-based Mangaldas, trained under Birju Maharaj and Kumudini Lakhia? After 35 years as a classical dancer, can her footprints consciously veer away? Tentative answers emerge in a post-performance interview:

          Why did you choose to break away from pure Kathak?

Kumudini Lakhia, my guru, taught us to keep an open mind. By 1986, I had traveled all over the world with Birju Maharajji’s company. Yet, there was something in me that wasn’t dancing. That’s when I left my gurus to find my own footsteps.

My rebellion was against the satellite role of women in traditional Kathak. (Passionately) You cried or were happy because of a man, you were afraid or changed because of a man. That’s beautiful, but it had nothing to do with my identity as a person… So, the initial moving out started by looking at literature. I read a Hindi poem by Agyeya that made me feel claustrophobic. Yet, nothing in the traditional Kathak repertoire, with its underlying sringara rasa, could help me to convey that dry emotion. How could I show it? We made a tabla beat of one theka, played over 15 minutes. It was so monotonous that it created a cone around you.

I began working with music, costumes, lights, but especially on the attitude.  (Thoughtfully) I felt the need to abstract the word to express it. It’s a comma that the audience interprets on their own journey… I’ve only learnt Kathak, so I have to draw my strength from the classical style.

But does abstracting the classical render it contemporary?

Not really… Kathak is the form that my body knows, but my mind knows much more, right? Since childhood, I’ve learnt yoga. (Intensely) My dance is the dynamism and spirit of Kathak with a yoga spine. I want to explore space using our bodies, but changing the dynamics of the spine. I do not like a blank face on stage. I dance with my heart. I don’t care how contemporary or not contemporary that is. Because, in Kathak, the main element is emotion. I want to retain its instantaneous communication with the audience.

‘Textures of Silence’ appeared almost as yoga in performance to the audience…

            I’d like to use yoga in a more seamless way. At the moment it is yoga in dance. I can see it myself.

           How would you do that?

Contemporary dance, to me, should engage with both movement and rhythm, intrinsic to Indian traditional forms. But can I take it beyond the traditional Kathak format, as I tried to in ‘Rhythm and Sound’? What would happen if I separated the ta and the thei to explore the finite possibilities of rhythm?

 ‘Lament,’ the last piece, is based on Neruda’s ‘When Eternity Ends… Journeys in Love.’ It’s a lament for when the spine breaks, when it’s not possible to hold yourself up. Yet, the human spirit pushes through, despite the overpowering lament.

In what direction could Kathak possibly move today?

All of us do traditional Kathak, whether we perform solos or dance at Khajuraho. We’ve moved out of the original milieu and context. Explorations outside the format can only enrich it. (Pausing) Even 50 years ago, it was possible to see the slight twitch of bhava, but today the quality of the mehfil has gone. Kathak is like a flowing river that has many tributaries joining it, bringing in change naturally. How can you fight it?

There are elements today that are considered traditional Kathak. Yet, 30 years ago, Kumudini Lakhia introduced them. At that point, it was considered blasphemous. Today, the tradition has to lose some and gain a lot.

But contemporary doesn’t mean western contemporary. Somebody asked me: ‘Why should I come to you to see contemporary dance? I can watch it in the west.’ But as an Indian dancer in this milieu, I have a right to be contemporary also.

            Even contemporary dance can sometimes appear codified...

Exactly… If you say this is not contemporary because it draws on the traditional, doesn’t it fall into the same trap? Today, Indian dancers from different milieus are drawing strength from their own particular styles. Down the line, that could create a completely different format.

In the west, we’ve had interesting receptions. (Energetically) We appear contemporary to them because they haven’t seen the sourcing.

(The Hindu Sunday Magazine, 2004)

Dance: Lata Pada ~ Forged by fire

(Note: I first interviewed Canada-based Lata Pada in 1985, when she lost her entire family in the Kanishka crash. In 2003, when she brought her dance production ~ 'Revealed by Fire ~ on a pan-Indian tour, she revealed how she turned her bereavement into renewal.)


LIFE can come full circle in the strangest ways. Or so it seemed to the audience at Canada-based Lada Pada's dance theatre presentation, "Revealed by Fire", which recently concluded its pan-Indian tour of New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai. The multi-media, interdisciplinary work spanned east and west, Bharatanatyam and contemporary movement, image and spoken text, to narrate an extraordinary woman's story that encompassed every woman's tale. "It was an ordinary day. I was rehearsing, when the phone rang... " The words echoed through Bangalore's Chowdiah Hall on November 26, 2003. For this transcendental piece of physical theatre, about the power of tragedy to transform, was inspired by Lata's journey of recovery from June 23, 1985, when she lost her entire family in Air India's Kanishka crash off the Irish coast — her husband, geologist Vishnu Pada, their daughters Brinda (18) and Arti (15).

In July 1985, in an interview in Madras, Lata had said: "I have about 12 dance students in Sudbury, Ontario. I'd like to use this opportunity in India to go right back to Bharatanatyam in an intensive way. I think I'll get the greatest fulfilment by continuing the pattern Vishnu had set. I'll take it from there."

And so she has, rebuilding her career as a Bharatanatyam soloist and collaborative artist through her 1990-born Toronto-based Sampradaya Dance Creations. In March 2001, she premiered "Revealed by Fire", acclaimed by Ballet Tanz International Yearbook as the year's most important production. The piece seamlessly melds R.A. Ramamani's Carnatic compositions into Timothy Sullivan's sound design, commingling its strains with everyday sounds, ghazals and Hindi filmi geet. The soundscape, in turn, meshes into artistic photographer Cylla von Tiedemann's visual design, into digitally re-mastered images from Lata's family album, the Kanishka crash, the intensity of flickering flames, Rajasthani village belles fading into a Srichakra, hibiscus blooms evoking the feminine life cycle — a procession of potent visuals projected onto a crushed rice-paper backdrop, enhanced by a sophisticated lighting plan.

The choreographic work, which used textiles brilliantly, did not always impress by the eloquence of its movement motifs. But its haunting text echoed long after the concluding interactive session with the audience: "If you take away my husband, am I still a wife? If you take away my children, am I still a mother?"

Because, essentially, this was the story of Lata, a 17-year-old who dreamt of becoming a doctor. Instead, she married Vishnu Pada, travelled with him to Indonesia, then settled in Canada 38 years ago. But June 1985 changed her certainties forever. That's when the phone rang in her Mumbai dance studio, where she was practicing for a performance...

How did Lata turn bereavement into renewal? Looking back over the traumatic years, she recalls, "I consider myself extremely blessed. I developed a way of coping that numbed my capacity to remember, it also increased my capacity to understand that the things you agonise about are fleeting... " Steadfastly by her side, bonded by belief in her future, stood her Mumbai-based guru, Kalaimamani Kalyanasundaran, Lata's family, and her friends.

As a disembodied telecast voice reads the news of the Kanishka crash, as red stains the pristine planes of life, as childhood games turn into adult questions, as the classical meets the contemporary, our terrorism-tainted world met an individual of resurgent spirit who forged her own creative voice, harmoniously fusing the present with the past. Yet, "Revealed by Fire" puzzled many Indian viewers. Moved to tears by acclaimed dramaturge-playwright Judith Rudakoff's intensely human text, riveted by the stunning onstage synchronicity, our minds teemed with post-production questions. Were the patterns of movement simplified to enhance the narrative? Was the piece geared mainly to western audiences? Was purity of form sacrificed to dexterity of treatment? Could the narrative have unfurled in another way?

Lata turns the clock back to its conceptual evolution. To a journey through India with Cylla in 1999, to haunting images from Mamallapuram, Kancheepuram, Kerala, to the sati sites of Rajasthan, to their resonances in her life. To talking to Judith for four hours, a conversation fashioned into the searing performance text, voiced by Lata. "Through it, I address my personal conflict about why there is such a veneration of the goddess, yet such a degradation of woman in society. Why does that paradox exist?" Lata explains.



"This production is a confluence of many artistic minds, each integral to the whole. It touches on universal themes of loss and grief. But also on the power of art to transform, especially post 9/11," she adds.

Does an image hold the six-dancer performance together? "Fire is metaphor. It is both a destructive and regenerative force. Every culture talks about the test of fire," says Lata. "When faced with catastrophic loss, there are two roads — to be destroyed by the fire or to allow it to reveal our hidden core strength and identity."

Her works, Lata emphasises, have constantly focused on questions of woman and identity. Be it through her earlier dance-theatre work, "Triveni", which relates Sita, Draupadi and Ahalya to generations of invisible, often silent, women ever since. Or her 2002 work "Sohrab: Mirage" (from the Dari language word for `mirage'), which dealt with Afghan women under the Taliban, triggered by Lata's memories of an Afghan schoolmate in Bangalore. Or a new international co-production she is engaged in with Anita Ratnam, Aditi Mangaldas, Chitra Sundaram and a Butoh dancer, among others.

In Canada, Lata celebrates community life through The Banyan Tree, a three-year outreach project. It has assisted south Asian senior citizens transplanted into the Canadian diaspora to workshop their experiences towards a public performance.

In June 2004, it will premiere a play about a young Indian girl who uses her grandmother's Panchatantra stories to frame herself within Canada. Besides, Lata helps to redefine Asian arts innovation to Canadian funding agencies.

Lata Pada's life has come full circle since June 1985. As "Revealed by Fire", dedicated to the 329 lives lost in the Kanishka crash, proved beyond doubt on its Indian tour.

(The Hindu Sunday Magazine, 2003)