Radha Through the Ages, Through the Hemispheres: East/West Cultural Juxtapositions as Explored

Through a Religious Figure Portrayed in Dance

Born in India and raised Hindu, my childhood was filled with stories-Radha and Krishna, Shiva and Parvati, Ganesha. Coming to America at a young age, these stories became my link to the East. Eventually, I began dancing

Bharathanatyam, a classical South Indian dance, which proved to be a double link back to my Eastern heritage; the dancing often centered on the tales that were so familiar to me. I regained that element of story as a dancer; through

dancing I learned story. Unless purely rhythm based, the dances centered on reenacting scenes from Hindu tradition, in which I would play one or more roles of figures from the tales.

Regardless of the time that has passed, Pallabi Chakravorty notes in her article, "From Interculturalism to Historicism: Reflections on Classical Indian Dance," that the "iconization of Sanskrit heroines (nayikas) and gods and

goddesses such as Radha, Shakuntala, Nataraja, Shiva, Durga, Rama, Sita, and others continues to dominate the classical dance repertory."1 Radha especially, with her lover Krishna, is a popular theme for dances and songs and

entertainment all over India. There are of course cultural variations on the tale, but a common storyline is that though both are married-Radha to Anay and Krishna to Rukmini and Satyabhama, the two continue to have a love for

each other-a love which is pure and symbolic of the divine love that one would have for God. Whether or not some people may associate their notion of India with the Kama Sutra and other "exotic" sexual fantasies, stories told to

me and explored through song and dance were always chaste; if the theme revolved around a god, regardless of his or her "dallyings," their love was always pure-never overtly sexual. It comes as no surprise, then, that when I saw

Ruth St. Denis dancing for the first time, I was rather horrified. Especially when I heard her danceRadha being described as "celebrating the pleasures of the senses," which leads to the dancer being plunged into "postorgasmic

darkness" after she "whirls with abandon, ending in the seductive vulnerability of a deep back bend" and "she slides her hands voluptuously over her body," and that after this "foreplay" she "writhes and trembles to a climax." I

had never before witnessed Radha portrayed so sexually.

Of course, the history of dance is certainly elaborate and complex in India, and there was a time when certain dancing inferred a link to prostitution. In fact, as Uttara Asha Coorlawala notes,

dance itself has many different connotations and these are indicated by different words. Nautch is the Anglicized pronunciation and transliteration of a Hindi word, naach, and
was construed by foreigners and many Indians at that time to mean dance generically-any dance-classical, folk, or popular. The word nautch could also refer to street dancers,
whose dance was only a thin pretext for prostitution, or to high-class courtesans...it was also used in reference to the devadasis-women from different backgrounds who were
dedicated at a very early age to dance exclusively in temples...Bringing all these together in a single word, nautch, the distinctions were glossed over and dance itself was
branded immoral.

However, rather than being "branded immoral," Ruth St. Denis has often been held up as one of the major reasons that dancing regained positive status not only in America, but in India as well. She is considered one of the

"mothers" of modern dance in general. Was this the basis of my horrification, then, that perhaps she was given far more credit than she deserved? A woman from the west, sexually distorting a story of the east and taking credit for

its positive transformative powers. Not wanting to be a closed minded patron of the arts, I decided to give her another chance. Maybe, after all, I was looking at this from a classically trained point of view and not from a more

secular vantage point. So in addition to Radha, I looked at two other non-classical, east-west border-crossing Radha dances: Uday Shankar's Radha-Krishna with Anna Pavlova and theRadha Kaise Na Jale ["How can Radha not

be jealous"] dance in the 2001 Bollywood movie Lagaan. While I still do not think that Ruth St. Denis was solely or mainly responsible for the shift in the way dance is perceived in modern India, I have come to agree with Walter

Terry's statement that "Ruth St. Denis' non-authentic Indian dance helped reawaken the subcontinent's slumbering dance art and [was] at least partially responsible for the renascence of India's respect for its 2,000 year old

heritage."4 I have accepted that while she certainly was not the mother of Indian dance, her work was legitimate in its own right, owing to the dance's relation to and reception by different audiences.To begin with, I looked at St.

Denis' dance again with a very objective eye to figure out what it was that had so frustrated me. First performed and filmed in New York in 1906, remaining footage of this first showing is minimal; in a documentary entitled

Trailblazers of Modern Dance, a brief clip of St. Denis' Radha was available amidst still photographs and biography.5 A barefoot St. Denis, in a long, flowing skirt and midriff-baring top, bears a foot-tall metallic looking

headpiece. Jane Desmond describes her dress as "a short jacket and gauzy skirt, [which] is accented with 'jewels' and trimmed with shiny material. Flowers adorn her hair and jewelry her ankles and arms."6 Frequently through her

dance, St. Denis arches her spine and tilts her head back, headpiece still in place, as she whirls across the stage. The music she whirls to sounds like a western classical piece, melodramatic orchestration replacing the vocals so

common in Indian dance music. She often gathers up her skirt as she turns, increasing speed to match the music's tempo. The music and her face are frenetic, and no movements, gestural or otherwise, indicate that Krishna is in the

picture, whereas usually he always is in these stories. An occasionally flashing red light further illuminates her performance.

Footage of Uday Shankar's Radha-Krishna (1923) with Anna Pavlova was unfortunately not directly available to me, but it was described meticulously in Joan L. Erdman's article, "Performance as Translation: Uday Shankar in
the West."Along with A Hindu Wedding, the other ballet Shankar choreographed for Pavlova, he created Radha-Krishna with Comalata Bannerjee, who provided eastern-inspired music produced by western instruments. Erdman
describes Radha-Krishna as "avoid[ing] mime and narrative and produc[ing] a series of decorative poses and movements: standing, swaying, turning, with accompanying hand and arm movements." In addition, Shankar "held a
flute (somewhat awkwardly), and the gopis (maidens) mostly swirled and stared at the divine pair." A total of eight gopis accompanied Shankar and Pavlova in the dance. As far as costumes and decor, Pavlova actually brought
genuine Indian fabric, design inspired by miniatures in the Victoria and Albert museum. The photograph of Shankar and Pavlova depicts Pavlova as a Radha in ballet slippers; she is wearing a long skirt and short blouse similar to
that of St. Denis, though long necklaces serve to partially cover her otherwise bare midriff. Ankle bells and bangles complete her costume.

The third dance is depicted in the 2001 Bollywood movie Lagaan, performed to a song entitled Radha Kaise Na Jale ["How can Radha not be jealous"].Radha and Krishna are danced by the principal actors Gracy Singh and

Aamir Khan, accompanied not only by a chorus of eight gopis and twelve men but also of an audience within the movie itself. The audience is comprised of westerners and local villagers, the latter of whom join the chorus dancers

as the piece progresses. Singh as the village girl Gowri dances the role of Radha, dressed in a simple yellow skirt and blouse. The fabric appears to be cotton, and a plain yellow scarf is draped around her body in a fashion that

mostly covers her midriff. Though she wears jewelry-bangles on her arms, earrings, a necklace, and a small nethi choti (a piece of jewelry attaching the scarf to her head)-it is all made of either simple silver or glass. Similar attire

and jewelry is seen on all the village girls, in colorful but earthy tones, browns, yellows, reds, and greens. The men, too-including Aamir Khan as Bhuvan as Krishna-are dressed in plain cotton kurthas and dhotis(long tops and

loose pants), but their colors are more muted than the women's. The women also wear a bindi, a dot on the forehead commonly seen on Hindu married and unmarried females. Like St. Denis, Singh wears ankle bells, but rather

than mere adornments they serve to keep time with the music throughout the piece, and especially during the instrumental bridge where Singh performs rhythmic Bharathanatyam-inspired steps.

The lyrics are in Hindi, with flutes and drums among other instruments, and some vocals reminiscent of Bharathanatyam talas (the "tha-thaka-thatha" rhythms that are spoken to keep time within many classical pieces). These

vocals occur especially when Radha dances in the more classical style. Additionally, Radha, Krishna, the gopis, and Krishna's men use both their hands and sticks to keep rhythm, clapping or hitting sticks with each other. Radha

and Krishna often directly interact: the most direct and frequent interaction is Radha pulling Krishna toward herself or at least away from the gopis. As often seen in classical Indian dance, the lyrics frequently mirror the action:

"Gopis come and go, but Radha queens over his heart," Krishna sings to Radha reassuringly as he dances around her. The dance concludes in a series of shared poses between the two, culminating in Radha spinning as the melody

and rhythm crescendo in volume and speed, although she ends solidly upright in a final solo pose.

What struck me upon viewing these pieces was not that Ruth St. Denis created a garish piece of entertainment that, from a classical Indian dancer's perspective, seemed hardly worth calling a dance but rather that many elements of

her dance were actually similar to Radha-Krishna and Radha Kaise Na Jale. However, presentation and relationship to the audience distinguishes the works of Shankar and the Bollywood industry's. For one thing, Ruth St. Denis'

piece was primarily performed for Westerners, by a Westerner-herself. Her 1906 New York audience received her with much enthusiasm; "the changes in American society at the turn of the century coincided with massive colonial

expansion... a popular and elite fascination with non-European cultures coincided with a rise in such 'sciences' of codification as ethnography. The 'exotic' was extremely fashionable." St. Denis gave these westerners exactly that:

the exotic. But these were usually audiences who knew as much or less than she did concerning the stories and customs of India. Susan Rather brings up a good point in that whatever St. Denis' intentions for her dance may have

been, "whether audiences recognized her performances as hybrids filtered through the American popular theatre is questionable."These people, whether within the "artistic circles of the cultural elite"or otherwise, sought

entertainment. Jane Desmond describes St. Denis' rise to fame with Radha:

First publicly performed in 1906, 'Radha' played in New York at Proctor's vaudeville house on Twenty-third Street, with St. Denis appearing between acts by a pugilist and a
group of trained monkeys. Soon, however, a New York socialite and oriental enthusiast, Mrs. Orland Rowland, took an interest in St. Denis's work and arranged a private
matinee for her society friends... St. Denis was launched on the high art circuit but her work never lost its cross-class appeal.

St. Denis' depiction of the exotic gave her work value for audiences from all classes within America, but her depiction was based only on her own impressionistic inspirations of what she had seen within America, and what she

knew her American audiences wanted to see.

On the other hand, she did not know what eastern audiences would necessarily want when she took the piece to India; we do not know how eastern audiences received her when she did. For one thing, recorded description from

that time remains difficult to find; as described in a report on dance research in India: "most of these texts existed as corrupt and scattered fragments, while a large corpus of textual and archaeological source materials lay hidden

and inaccessible."For another thing, text itself was often controlled by the Westerners at the time; Uttara Asha Coorawala explains that "in 1926, newspapers in English...were run by British colonials, and their views did not
necessarily reflect popular responses by Indians."One of these newspapers, for instance, The Rangoon Daily News, wrote that St. Denis

is assuredly the greatest Western exponent of Indian dancing that one has yet seen it in the East...So often has the Indian dance been confused with the Egyptian movements by
Western dancers who have visited the East, that it is a pleasure to witness the typically Indian dance which is performed by Miss St. Denis and her troupe.

Again, this was a British interpretation of the reception; actual eastern audiences at the time either could not write in these publications themselves, not knowing English, or were literate in the English that the British had taught

them, making them more likely to praise Western culture. Indeed, with respect to Eastern reaction, one is left to speculation. Speculations included that Indian audiences "were excited to see a white woman on stage, in public, and

dressed uncharacteristically" and that these local audiences may have also been "flattered that Indian dance had indeed been represented in a superior context (i.e. within the frames of colonist taste)." This statement again stresses

the importance of putting the dance into a frame, in this case, a Western one, even while the dance was being presented in the East. Ted Shawn, St. Denis' partner,

reasoned that their enthusiasm was a natural response to Ruth's superiority to the native nautch dancers, her 'having a richness and purity beyond the conception of these
native women and having a beauty and charm of person not possessed by them...' Other onlookers suggested, a trace more cynically, that the natives may have been merely
titillated by the spectacle of a Western woman in Indian dress performing a dance done only by harlots.

Although we do not actually know who was right, Shawn's sense of Western superiority interferes with any objectivity he could have possessed, thus lending credibility to the more probable cynical audience reception.

Shankar's context was quite different. First of all, he was an Easterner, a man born and raised in India. Shankar had gone to London to pursue his studies when Pavlova requested that he help her create her ballets. Shankar toured

with her in the US in 1923-1924; Pavlova suggested he go back to India to "bring something to show us" but not to actually perform there, so that his primary audience remained Western. Within the Western scope, his audience

was primarily European; and "Shankar experimented with presenting Indian dance to western audiences in Europe and with teaching Europeans his developing style of modern Indian dance."As his experimentations progressed,

like St. Denis, he learned to tailor his work to his audience, realizing that "short thematic dances were easier for westerners to understand than long narratives." Shankar was not only conscious of the attention span of his

audiences, but also of the social structures: Erdman points out that "the themes of his Paris dances in the 1920's...and the occasional billing (to attract a larger crowd) as 'Prince Shankar' suggest the necessity of accessible themes

and an element of social status." Like St. Denis, Shankar's dancing was accepted by a "higher" class, the cultural elite. He knew that they looked for the exotic, seeking the spiritual element that did not require vast knowledge of the

original dances in order to appreciate them. Fernau Hall, in a tribute to Shankar, points out that another reason for Shankar's success was that

what he presented was exactly right for its time. Deeply influenced by Indian art and by certain aspects of Indian classical dancing (notably Kathakali dance-drama) he presented
a type of Indian dance-solos, duets, and ballets-that could easily be assimilated by Western audiences. Real Kathakali would have been much too complex, too demanding of
specialized knowledge, to have such success at the time.

Shankar had the advantage of not only knowing what the original, authentic Kathakali was, but knowing how Westerners reacted to dance, based on his years of experience through living in a Western world after coming from the

East. Plus, he collaborated with Pavlova, who was a native of the Western world.

The cast and crew of Lagaan, too, had the advantage of multiple, knowledgeable perspectives of East and West. Eastern and Western folk who had both traveled to each other's hemisphere were interacting to create a piece rich

with the joys of Indian culture as well as with what a Western audience with minimal knowledge and attention span would want. The audience ofRadha Kaise Na Jale is manifold; in addition to the audience of today, consisting of

worldwide theatergoers of all classes, there was the audience within the movie: the 1893 audience of local Indians and British colonists. Though the lyrics of the dance are in Hindi, a substantial portion of the movie transpires in

English-and though produced through the Bollywood industry in India, this movie was marketed worldwide, providing an even broader audience. This particular DVD was produced in California, and I've seen numerous copies in

Blockbusters all around town.

With respect to the question of audience, all these three pieces, though perhaps viewed by Indian audiences, are certainly marketed towards the Western world. Chakravorty points out that regardless of where dance may have

originated, "in reality, the actual production space is the competitive market and the modern secular stage."While the competitive market is certainly just cause to create dances targeted towards audiences, we must not forget the

question of crediting. In other words, maybe St. Denis, Shankar, and Bollywood all want to make money. That is an undeniable and forgivable truth in the world. But how does this economic motivation affect the art?

It was certainly difficult for Ruth St. Denis to find resources, for "opportunities to see authentic Indian dance in the West hardly existed,"it is true, but then why did St. Denis have to market her dance as an Indian dance? Rather

than accepting that her dances were loosely based on what she had seen on Coney Island of skirt dancing, she declares preceding one of her performances, "I will show you the characteristic racial gesture in each

dance."Absolutely nothing in her work or her experience indicates that she has the authority of determining a "characteristic racial gesture." In fact, in her writings she actually admits her lack of authenticity in dancing: "at no time

have I been sufficiently the scholar or sufficiently interested to imitate or try to reproduce any Oriental ritual or actual dance-the mood to me is all, and inevitably manifests its own pattern."She realized her lack of knowledge, and

continued to create dances "based" in Hindu religion. Coorawala writes, "Her dances were unashamedly inauthentic; they reflected her own personality," not the typical religiosity present in actual Eastern dancing.

Desmond writes that St. Denis' Radha is not "narrative. Although there is a thin story line the majority of stage time is devoted to the display of the body in a way that does not drive a narrative forward by providing new

information or character development."Typical classical dancing, unless purely rhythm-based, or nritta, is based strongly in narrative. Even in the other dances investigated here, though they are not classical, they have some sense

of story, even if the story is not as involved as some classical pieces. Radha Kaise Na Jale, for instance, uses the lyrics of the song as the story; it is the progression of Radha's jealousy of Krishna's popularity with the gopis and

the eventual declaration of love from Krishna that propels the dance. "Why should Radha be jealous," wonders Krishna ["kis liye Radha jale"], stroking his chin thoughtfully. Using her index and middle finger in a sideways "V"

to indicate her eyes-a common Bharatanatyam hand gesture known askartharimukaha-Radha's response is that "Krishna keeps looking at the other gopis" ["kaanha ke ye jo naina hain chheene gopiyon ke chaina hain"]. Krishna

then proceeds to reassure her that Radha is the queen of his heart ["Radha to mann ki rani hai"], placing the index and middle fingers of his right hand together-the ardhapathaka hand gesture symbolizing "queen"-next to his heart.

A strong storyline lends itself to inherent spirituality in many forms of Indian dance; if we are watching a scene from the Hindu texts involving Radha and Krishna, however secular their actions may be they are still clearly

connected to religion. Their attractions, their jealousies, and their affections all then imply a divine love with its own set of ups and downs, which does not need to be established as an exaggeratedly emotional "state" as Desmond

discusses.

Not only does Ruth St. Denis' Radha not contain a strong narrative, but it lacks clearly rhythm-motivated movement as well. In other words, though she wears bells on her feet, the sound is clearly heard only when she spins in

circles-unlike in other Indian dancing, where the bells, the sticks, or hand clapping follow the melody or the rhythm of the music. Her music itself is not very percussive. Her costuming, too, was distinctly more "revealing" for a

stage dance than other Indian dancing. In Radha Kaise Na Jale, for instance, Gracy Singh covered up her midriff at least partially by the traditional scarf worn around the waist, something which St. Denis chose instead to drape

over her head, and even Anna Pavlova had long necklaces substantially hiding her belly.

In looking so closely at the differences, I again make myself pause and reflect on the fact that after all, St. Denis was not Indian. Due to this fact, her works automatically lack authenticity. For example, one of Shankar's major

appeals was his authenticity. Erdman writes, "he had to fulfill western expectations of Indian authenticity-based on writings about and travel in India, access to Indian art and spirituality, and the occasional visits of Indian notables

as well as photos of sculpture, paintings, and temples."The thing is, he could fulfill these expectations; he lived in India for eighteen years and periodically went back to visit. Plus, he looked Indian; his "authenticity came partly

from his Indian features and dress and partly from his ability to convey 'Indianness' through his poses and through authentic Indian gestures." Because whatever else he was, Shankar was Indian, where St. Denis was not.

Shankar's pieces themselves were not always "authentically" Indian;

Shankar's dependence on the visual and plastic arts, as well as his life experience and his tours around India, led to productions that were, like the "oriental dances" of
westerners, not presentations of the Indian classical dances. But what distinguishes Shankar from every western interpreter is that he spent his childhood in India, where he
learned dance from folk dancers in Uttar Pradesh and from court dancers in Rajasthan.

However much Shankar may have experimented and fused danced styles and gone off the beaten track from tradition, he could always market his works as genuinely Indian because he was.

At this point I am wondering whether St. Denis would have liked to be Indian herself. And if she had been, would I have taken her dancing more seriously? Deemed it more authentic? But Matthew Allen Harp points out, "she

lays no claim to authenticity either in choreography or in representation of mythology."It was not St. Denis' goal to be authentic. She wanted an audience, she wanted fame, and money, and she wanted to explore her own sense of

spirituality through dances. In all these she succeeded. She was an entertainer, and as far as that goes she was very good at it. In that light, her dance does not bother me nearly as much. In fact, in accepting that her dance is not
attempting to be "authentic," it really ought not to bother me at all.

Still, her dancing leaves me unsettled. While a dance must be looked at in its context, and St. Denis' context was that she did not have much direct access to authentic Indian dancing, she could have made more effort to find

authentic dancing. She was not the only western dancer to have difficulty finding authentic Indian dance-Anna Pavlova, for instance, faced her own hardships. Harp mentions that she, "like St. Denis and Shawn-found it extremely

difficult to see actual Indian dancing in India. Realizing her difficulties, however, Pavlova took the trouble to find an actual Indian dancer who would be able to help her create an Indian dance by giving it Indian credibility.

Shankar's dancing came from the source; "being born and raised in India gave him a natural genuineness. By having direct Indian dance experience, Shankar was then able to change the classical Indian dance into a more Western-

oriented style, while still maintaining credibility. Though his dancing was "not based on training in a particular dance or genre," it was based "on a combination of apprenticeship study with the royal Jhalawar dancers, village

celebrants at Nasrathpur, and the tableaux in miniature paintings,"providing him with an even broader range of experience to incorporate in his works, rather than a glimpse of Coney Island skirt dancers and pictures in books as St.

Denis had.

One cannot look at a dance as divorced from its context. Jane Desmond touches upon the East/West issue regarding St. Denis' dance: "if 'Radha' is 'about' the East, it is even more about the West...Western discourse about 'the East'

reflects a continually changing historical process of self-definition by 'the West.' We can see 'Radha' as a portrayal of Western desires and ambivalences displaced onto an orientalized, gendered body."If this is how we look at St.

Denis' Radha, this is what we will see. However, this is not how 1906 American audiences looked at it. For her contemporaries, she translated a religious Hindu tale into a pure form of entertainment, so what they saw was that a

religion was entertainment, filled with rhythm and sexuality rather than a true spirituality and divinity. How do we draw the lines between entertainment and spirituality?

Dancing is always about translation: the lyrics of the accompanying music from Hindi to English, word to gesture, East to West, mind to body. My dancing as Radha in a classical Bharathanatyam performance is bound to be

completely different than Ruth St. Denis on a 1906 vaudeville stage. Having lived in both India and America, having learned multiple kinds of dance, and having a century of history behind me to draw upon undoubtedly provide

me with a different sense of the way Indian dance ought to be approached. While it may not have been Ruth St. Denis' fault that she was born over a hundred years ago, or that she was not born Indian, nor is it my fault that I am

not able to look at her works with but a critical eye, having danced as Radha myself. East or West, Radha embodies a spirituality from which no amount of time or translation can detract.