sarma

Even if I hadn't read the Asia Society's lucid program notes about Chhau, the masked dance of Purulia, I think I would have guessed from the dancing that this part of West Bengal is hot and dry, that the land is rocky and hard to cultivate, and that fierce beasts still roam the forests.

The style is not simply virile, it's ferocious. You can't see the faces of the all-male performers, only their glossy masks, but their bodies always look vigilant, battle-ready. They stride or strut along imaginary paths on the stage -knees bent, arms swinging, spine straight, head turning from side to side. Many, many times in the course of an evening, dancers stamp one foot in front of them and take off in a rapid jumped turn; during preparation, turn, and landing they hold their bodies in a tense crouch, sometimes in a squat. Whap, whap. Are they trying to beat grain out of stubborn ground?

The music that accompanies their dancing is played on a dry, woody flute, an immense drum that is hit with two thick sticks, and a smaller drum that the player slings around him. The musicians, who also chant plot elements, are as combative as the dancers: sometimes they seem to be luring them onto the stage or goading them on in their endeavors.

Apparently, the earliest dances of Purulia were all war dances. Later, to please helpful Hindu rulers, the dances were embedded in stories from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. The eight Chhau dancers performing at Carnegie Hall must have presented an anthology of their fiercest fights and contests. Ganesh, the elephant-headed god, and Kartik, the god who rides a peacock, (marvelously suggested by the performer's costume which includes a feathertail and a bird head on his groin) fight a demon one by one and are defeated. Durga, their mother, arrives and gives the demon a good thrashing. Three good kings and the demon king, Ravana, attempt to lift the bow of Shiva and win the hand of a valuable maiden, and no amount of grunting and wrenching does the trick; the great Rama lifts the bow, but then has to fight a Shiva devotee. Krishna, relaxing in the woods, is accidentally shot by a hunter and dies in twitching convulsions that lift his entire body off the ground. Finally, Abhimanyu, the son of Arjuna, has to fight seven warriors simultaneously.

Sounds harsh, doesn't it? Well, I suppose it is. But it's never grisly. The actors are too brisk, the fights too formal for that. (Combats are designated by rapid advances and retreats, the flourishing of weapons, spins and jumps, and the participants' fierce attentiveness to each other.) A few scenes are lyrical, almost languid -Krishna executing a melancholy dance soliloquy after battle- but most get down to business (i.e., fighting) quickly. The bow-lifting contest is one of the most human of the excerpts offered. King No. 1 (Kshirod Sing Mura) approaches the sacred bow with awe and hesitation at first; King No. 2 (Jagru Mahato, a particularly fine dancer, very loose and bold) strides in cockily, a know-it-all; King No. 3 (Gambhir Sing Mura) takes a look at the two stalwarts who've been defeated and begins to worry about his own prowess.

And you see all this despite the masks. In fact, the strong, agile, expressive bodies contrast poignantly with those frozen faces and glittering crowns. A demon appears forever snarling, in triumph as in death; a king -his small, pretty, sharp features crowded together in the center of his face, (the way they are on those American china-headed dolls)- looks as placid when he is surrounded by adversaries as he does strolling through the forest.