Leap toward ageism a backward step in dance

Two steps forward, one step back: That’s the Dance of Progress, and it’s being performed right now on a number of world stages.

One of them is India, a nation with an enviably generous tradition of official government support for the arts. However, that tradition took a vigorous back step recently when Justice Arjan Kumar Sikri of the Delhi High Court ruled that dancers over 45 cannot be said to give performances, merely lecture-demonstrations.

The ruling came in response to a petition filed in the court by Komala Varadan, a 62-year-old classical dancer insisting that she be listed as a performing artist in the files of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, a governmental agency under the Ministry for External Affairs. The ICCR offers funding and sponsorship of international tours to Indian performers, so a policy that creates bureaucratic distinctions among “budding artists” (ages 18 to 25), “performing artists” (25 to 45) and those dumped against their will into the “lec-dem” designation (45 and above) virtually ghettoizes a generation of India’s most fabled dancers.

“The ICCR is very crucial for dancers who cannot afford to create and maintain networks for performances abroad, says Anita Ratnam, a prominent dancer based in Chennai, “and if you are a classical dancer, the dependence upon the ICCR will become more and more crucial in the years ahead.”

And you and I are to blame, according to some experts defending Sikri’s ruling and the ICCR policy. “It’s the body that matters for dancers and audiences abroad, and not the mind,” says classical dancer-choreographer Geeta Chandran in an article by musician and journalist G.S. Rajan on the Web site ArtIndia.net. A dance critic who uses the one-name byline Subbudu, and writes for the Statesman in New Delhi, even speculates in the article that “dancers with disappropriate bodies would invite demonstrations outside the auditorium.”

That’s sacred bull. Never in history has the older dancer been more respected in more places. And never have senior dancers created a greater number of unforgettable performances. Margot Fonteyn made you believe that she was the teenage Juliet in her late 40s, and the magic survives even in a film of the performance. Martha Graham danced the Bride in “Appalachian Spring” for the first time at age 50 and that performance remains one of the classics in American modern dance.

More recently, in the Hague, Jiri Kylian (a leading candidate for greatest living choreographer) formed Nederlands Dans Theater III, a company devoted to showcasing the artistry of dancers over 40. In Taiwan, 47-year-old dancer-choreographer Lo Man-fei formed the Taipei Crossover Dance Company to fulfill a similar mission. And Marion Scott’s Spirit Dances series has explored the creative options of senior dancers here in the Southland. The best older dancers have lived with their art long enough to be able to focus their energy and our attention on essential and often revelatory movement statements, or break our hearts by infusing what they do with layers of complex emotional, intellectual and spiritual implications. Lec-dems? Kiss my walker.

Classic interpretation

Since the Sikri ruling addressed a petition by a classical dancer, let’s talk classicism for a moment. In India, it takes many forms, but generally requires a combination of rhythmic vigor (often displayed through percussive footwork) and emotional nuance (usually conveyed through a detailed, codified expressive vocabulary for the hands and face). Younger dancers commonly excel in the former, older dancers in the latter, with the dances themselves chosen to accommodate each individual’s strengths.

So when dance master Kelucharan Mohapatra, 74, appeared at the Japan America Theatre three years ago in a program of classical dance from the Indian state of Orissa, you saw such qualities as flow of movement, highly specific facial acting and refined body sculpture prioritized over footwork. But the result was a full-fledged performance, one with a lifetime of revelations to share.

Similarly, senior classical dancers officially recognized as National Living Treasures of Korea inspire audiences well past Sikri’s over-the-hill-at-45 ruling. At the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in 1989, 65-year-old Mae Bang Yi performed ritual drum dances with such profound concentration that he embodied the Buddhist ideal of union with the infinite. And in 1992, Japanese National Living Treasure Fujima Fujiko danced at age 85 as if each gesture, pose and transition in her classical solos held primal secrets -- secrets passed down to her daughter, grandson, students and audiences not through lec-dems but full-scale performance experiences. Indeed, star actor-dancers of Japan’s Grand Kabuki are not considered mature artists worthy of serious consideration until they enter their 40s.

The list of examples, happily, could be much longer, but the point should be clear enough by now: There is no young dancer in India who can do what Mohapatra did -- not even Mohapatra’s son. Denying international audiences access to great artists of any age in India would effectively prevent us from experiencing the unique, redemptive Indian vision of what dance can be.

Out-of-body experience

Sensuality permeates through many Indian forms of classical dance, but it’s invariably expressed through the responses of characters in narrative contexts -- not beefcake guys grabbing their crotches or cheesecake girls shaking their maracas a la display-oriented Euro-American commercial dance. Dancers in their physical prime can be thrilling, and it’s human nature to delight in ogling a perfect young body. But an Indian dancer’s ability to take a foreign audience into the realm of erotic fantasy -- to make us feel the heady desire of a young woman waiting on a moonlit night for her Hindu god-lover, for instance, can and should be judged on a case-by-case basis, not determined simply by checking birth dates.

And what’s 45, anyway? If Sikri and the India Council for Cultural Relations really believe that in classical Indian dance “it is perfect body and movements that matter for audiences abroad” (Rajan’s words in explaining that institution’s viewpoint), why bother to let imperfect 40-somethings in on the action with their sagging bodies? Why not lower the age to 25, give every ticket holder a backstage pass and revive the ancient Indian tradition of dancer-prostitutes?

Western audiences have seen plenty of dancers who stay too long at the fair and trade on reputations earned when they were younger: the late Rudolf Nureyev in his 50s lurching through George Balanchine’s “Apollo” or, for that matter, French ballet diva Sylvie Guillem in her mid-30s, removing or simplifying all her technical challenges in “Giselle.” But audience disappointment and critical ridicule invariably accompany such indulgences, so an official government prohibition hardly seems necessary.

The Sikri ruling comes at a time when age itself has become a potent subject for choreographic exploration. In “HeartBeat: mb” former ballet star Mikhail Baryshnikov dancing to his own amplified heartbeat at 50 made an indelible statement about mortality, and locally based post-modern dancer-choreographer Rudy Perez regularly tells us truths in his 70s that no younger dancer perceives, much less expresses.

Stalinism in the arts is always bad news, and Stalinism coupled with ageism and the assumption that the classic dances of India ought to inspire body-worship rather than reverence is downright ridiculous. Hindus everywhere believe that the whole universe was created in a dance performance by the eternal, ever-potent god Shiva. If so, it’s indeed a blessing for all of us that Sikri wasn’t around at the time to check Shiva’s ID.

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Lewis Segal is The Times’ dance critic.