sarma

Some of India's major classical dance styles - Bharata Natyam, for example - are solo forms. Properly speaking, there can be no chorus of milkmaids for Krishna to dance with, no duets for Shiva and Parvati, no armed conflicts as there are in the Kathakali theatre. Yet these soloists perform not only pure dance, but poems with elaborate glosses and variant stanzas, and complicated dramas in which they play all the parts.

Ritha Devi danced at Jacob's Pillow again this summer, and as I said last summer, I would travel farther than that to see her, expecially since when she is in the U.S. she gives relatively few concerts. She performs in the Kuchipudi and Odissi styles, both of which are closely related to Bharata Natyam, but with subtle distinctions. Both styles slip into the carved, frontally oriented poses of bas reliefs; both, of course, use rhythmic foorwork, mudras, stylized facial expressions. However, Odissi and Kuchipudi seem to mix more curves and loops with the angles formed by knee, ankle, thigh, elbow, head. Odissi in particular has an equivocal, almost languid look because of the beautiful S-shaped countercurves of hip and rib cage. It makes you think of the happily copulating gods on those famous temples where divinity is a sweet, reassuringly sensual power.

Ritha Devi specializes, it seems, in dramatic dances. She is a tiny, pretty woman - almost doll - like in her paint and her silks. When you first see her, she seems so compact, so charming that you wonder what she will do with the massive themes she tackles.

This summer's Pillow program eases her formidable strength out to you slowly. She begins with a "shabdam" (a poem dance-an exploration of perhaps one corner of a dramatic event). In it, she is a court dancer enticing her king with small gifts and elegant praise. She is quick, willful, arching briefly away from him and then swaying back. The focus of the dance makes you, the audience, the recipient of these promises.

So, she finishes this one. It's difficult, but it deals with one character and one mood. After a second's pause, she's back on stage with a different kind of dramatic dance, also in the Kuchipudi style. She is the child Krishna playing with his ball. When an unlucky toss lands it in the river, he dives after it, and in the process of recovering the ball overcomes the evil serpent, Kaliya, who poisons the river water. This simple tale slowly opens out to reveal the power and importance of the god, and it ends with a whole catalog of Krishna dance walks. Some of these I hadn't seen before: the taut little jump with both big toes locked together, the walk with the toenail of the gesture leg dragging a semi-circle on the floor, the strange footwork executed while standing on-and propelling-a large brass plate. Ritha Devi manages it all. She is the child Krishna-innocent, almost awkward as he dives. She is the serpent. She is the redoubtable god. She is the tireless dancer showing you how to recognize him.

Her final dance, Dashavatari,  is Odissi. In it, she becomes in rapid succession all of the different incarnations of Vishnu. He is the Preserver of the Hindu trinity, the once and future king who appears when mankind most needs him and who will appear again, riding a white horse and wielding a sword. The dancer shows/becomes the fish, the boar, the man-l ion. In between each new incarnation, she is humanity pleading for divine aid. Some of the god's avatars are men and warriors; the movement that reveals them is in a broad, strong style. The dancer settles into deep, wide knee-bends, stretching her arm and body back to lift the axe, the plough, the bow. Like most of these Indian solo dramas the dance is a rich mixture of narrating, cataloging, acting, dancing. The performer moves from depicting to becoming to commenting to praising. The process of transformation is as informal as it is mysterious.

Ritha Devi's dances are quite long: I don't thing that any concessions have been made to Western concepts of theatrical time. I like the length. Absorbed completely in the shape of what she is doing, she hordes power at the center of her dancing, and only when she has absolutely finished can she bestow it on you-as if it were fabric tied off and snapped from the loom on which it was made.