Embodying Navarasas in Performative Practice
Photograph courtesy: Natanakairali Archives, 2019
In one of his lectures, Rabindranath Tagore writes, "our emotions are the gastric juices which transform this world of appearance into the more intimate world of sentiments." This thought resonates with me as a dance practitioner, particularly when aligned with the very well-known shloka:
Angikam Bhuvanam Yasya
Vaachikam Sarvangmayam
Aharyam Chandra Taradi
Tam Namam Sattvikam Shivam
The literal translation of this verse is:
This entity whose body is comprised of the entire universe
Whose speech is the essence of all the languages in this universe
Whose ornaments are the stars and the moon
I bow down to this pure truth
The second line of this quatrain talks about speech as being the essence of all languages in the universe and provokes us to consider their commonalities. All speech is predominantly suffused with emotions; thus, emotions are the language of this universe.
Emotions are also the language at Natana Kairali’s two-week-long Navarasa Sadhana workshop in the quaint little town of Irinjalakuda in Kerala. The workshop is developed by G. Venu, a renowned scholar and exponent of the theatre tradition Koodiyattam and Kathakali. It focuses on participants intensely experiencing emotions rather than portraying mere facial expressions. Venu sir - or Guruji, as he is fondly called - trained with some of the doyens of Kerala’s traditional art forms, including Guru Gopinath, Guru Ammannur Madhava Chakyar, and Guru Ammannur Parameshwara Chakyar.
On the first day of the workshop, Guruji noted "one has to be absent-minded to be open-minded... [and] must have an independent interpretation of one’s practice to ensure rasavikalpa or exposition of rasa" (aesthetic flavour or experience of art) from all perspectives. This set the stage for the following two weeks when ten participants of the 24th Navarasa Sadhana explored and exposed every emotion with cathartic involvement.
Each day commenced with eye exercises. We focussed our eyes on a lamp in front of us, swept them back and forth along the horizon of the ocean, followed raindrops, and moved them in tandem to a blazing fire torch. The lamp, ocean, raindrops, and fire torch were all imaginary. Each day we learned to imagine and then imagine some more with absolute conviction. We trained ourselves to engage with our personal visualisations and make our eyes "not only see with photographic clarity but also show" with precision. Guruji contends that "imagination is everything" and a performer should transition from being an individual to an actor and then finally a character to experience the true intensity of emotions.
As we began unraveling each navarasa, it became very clear to me that I was apprehensively letting myself into a new world of experiences filled with wonder. Guruji guided us to use the five senses of touch, smell, taste, sight, and sound to experience the navarasas in their entirety. I felt powerfully engaged by being involved in the understanding of the five senses, navarasas, and vyabhichari bhavas or the transitory state of emotions.
Photo courtesy: Natanakairali Archives, 2019
The thirty-three vyabhichari bhavas are elucidated in Bharata’s Natyashastra, the oldest surviving treatise on dramatic art that deals with all aspects of classical Sanskrit theatre. It is believed to have been written between 200 BCE and 200 CE. As part of the workshop, we improvised on a few vyabhichari bhavas while trying to embody the experience and contextualise it as part of a performance. Guruji encouraged unrestricted emotional self-expression, which was intimidating at first, especially in a society where we are always told to ‘control our emotions’ or ‘keep our emotions in check’. It is well known that repressed emotions become prisoners in our own bodies, shutting down effective communication. To step out from being conditioned like this to baring my emotions in front of complete strangers, albeit in the guise of performance, was nerve-wracking and unsettling at first. I felt fragile and helpless; however, I eventually opened up and it became the most enriching and tangible learning experience of my time at the workshop.
As part of improvising on the vyabhichari bhavas, we explored nirveda (helplessness) which Guruji noted was one of the most challenging bhavas. I experienced poverty and what it felt like to be unclothed, grave illness and a body that failed me, mental agony and the death of my dearest grandmother. I shamelessly screamed, cried, insulted and accused while my Guruji and co-participants watched me non-judgmentally, letting me be raw, vulnerable and exposed. It let me engage with my emotions in an unhindered manner while I savoured the experience of learning and being. I watched my co-participants do the same, observing, sympathising, and empathising. In the process, I absorbed the abundant emotions around me and engaged with a new kind of knowledge that penetrated deep into every cell of my body. As an art practitioner, I learned to experience emotions and situations by merging my body and mind with them. All forms of dualities - animal and human, performer and I, performance and real life - became dissolved. My goal, albeit subconsciously, moved towards reaching a sense of accomplishment that would further me to a state of empathetic attainment where everything else became irrelevant.
This personally-involved process revealed a deeper understanding of empathy as larger than life, a place where the realisation of life manifests. I now understand it to be a state that is non-ego-bound and allows infinite possibilities. Within the context of performance, empathy and my experiences became my ultimate reality to a point where it transcended the performance. It became as real or even more significant than the microcosm reality of human life and experience. As I improvised and imagined seeing the dead body of my grandmother lie there on that bed, the sadness, tears, and choked screams that ensued were as real as the day I saw her lifeless body as a little girl.
In the throes and the aftermath of the non-ego-bound experiences I wrote:
The experience of life
An artist, one moment
A movement and breath
In tandem, intertwined.
Sound, fragrance, feel
Existing in silence
A space for life
To create.
Dualities drawing breath from non-duality
Disappearing, appearing
The soul, within the being
Once dormant, now enlivened.
Emptied of ego
The lotus once inveterate and raw
Now unearthed and transcendent
The unraveling begins.
Human emotions set ablaze
Restrictions devoid
Invoking spiritual freedom
Disconnect and new beginnings.
Nothingness
Release. Silent. Radiant.
Eventuality of a magical essence
An embodied creative existence.
As we progressed through each of the navarasa, it became evident that exploring the essence of the human emotional psyche with deep involvement was important for an art practitioner while emoting. Guruji’s method of teaching encouraged this aspect of learning. For instance, to enact veeram (courage) we depicted the powerful Ravana who tries to lift the Kailasa mountain. To empower us to experience a realistic and involved enactment of this, Guruji encouraged us to try and lift a heavy log to comprehend the subtleties of heaviness and its feeling, both physically and mentally. I understood the relevance of this as I began the enactment of lifting the mountain – the feeling of blood rushing to my face, bloodshot eyes, loss of balance, body posturing, grunting and roaring to name a few.
Alongside such experiences, Guruji also emphasised the importance of breath, taught to him by his Guru, Ammannur Madhava Chakyar. Guru Ammannur Madhava Chakyar learned the nuances of breath and its subtilities from Kodungalloor Bhagavathar Kunjunni Thampuran, an expert scholar and researcher on Navarasa Abhinaya. The elucidation of breath in performative practice is something I became aware of as a dance practitioner over twenty years ago. I also came across the mention of breathing techniques such as nasanila and shvasanila from the Balaramabharatham, and mukhoshvasa from my readings on yoga and Indian performative practices. However, Guruji’s exposition of the relation of breath to each navarasa expanded this concept and created a sense of excitement and involvement with the emotions. I experienced reality, truth, and depth of emotions when the breath and body, imagination and eyes, and actor-character and movement came together. To me, this was akin to a body-purification and revelation of the self. It is in this state that the psychophysical acts totally engaged with my body, mind, and spirit.
Photograph courtesy: Natanakairali Archives, 2019
Upon reflecting, I believe an encoding of complete body consciousness occurred; my body and personality underwent a subtle change to experience another state. The Navarasa Sadhana and a world of imagination without boundaries or limitations permitted my body to disconnect and make new connections. It enabled me to engage with fertile emotions to experience the knowledge and experiences of the world, differently and more intimately. It transformed an ordinary experience into something extraordinary. My psycho-physical body underwent a rearrangement into a non-ego-bound state where nothing mattered except the present. Those were the moments when my body and mind engaged in a state of openness and acceptance, at its most granular level, enabling the experiences of divine knowledge and earthly energies. For me, that was real rasa and rasanubhuti.
Kanak Rele articulates this beautifully when she observes:
"aesthetic experience (rasa) consists in the experience of a basic emotion, affecting a soul that is completely deindividualised. The deindividualisation is a slow process. It pre-supposes self-forgetfulness…Thus the aesthetic experience at the cathartic level is the experience of completely deindividualized self, having no affection than that of the unindividualized human emotion."
Transitioning from an individual to an actor to a character permits the performer to imagine a perspective from a character’s viewpoint. In the space where the performer and character unite, there is a creation of strong imagined experiences. This allows a complete picture of the performative context to develop, resulting in the elevation and upward journey of aesthetic experiences. The consequent emotions are real, expressive, and perceptible but can only happen with complete involvement and character identification at a highly emotional level. This is the moment of transcendence. When the body, mind, and experiences are all in tandem, transcendence is nothing but an inevitable byproduct. This form of knowledge is the essence of tangible and intangible divine truth.
Bharatha’s Natyashastra states that internal feelings that are "endearing to the heart give rise to emotions resulting in the production of sentiment which pervade the whole body as fire engulfs dry wood". Absolute involvement through imagination, that transforms a performer into a character infused with multiple attributes, allows the experience of life utilising comprehensive possibilities of acting (abhinaya). In a way, it also allows us as humans to experience the deep-seated essence of who we really are.
On the last day after we had performed all the navarasas one after the other, there was a sense of complete tranquillity. We were purged and cleansed. When Guruji’s wife, the eminent scholar and Mohiniattam dancer Guru Nirmala Panicker commented "what I witnessed today was utter and complete transcendence," I was reminded of the following quote from the Dhvanyaloka:
"Once a rasa has been thus realized, its enjoyment (is possible), an enjoyment which is different to the apprehensions derived from memory or direct experience and which takes the form of melting, expansion, and radiance. This enjoyment is like the bliss that comes from realizing (one’s identity) with the higher Brahman for it consists of repose in the bliss which is the true nature of one’s self, a nature which is basically sattva (truth)."
With Guru Venu G.
Photograph courtesy: Natanakairali Archives, 2019
Guruji’s cleverly crafted Navarasa Sadhana allows participants to experience a state of undiluted being akin to an enlightened and liberated soul. At Natana Kairali, Guruji has created a safe and encouraging haven for a style of learning and experiencing that permits the imagined to merge with the real. This creates a time and space for the individual to transform into an actor and then manifest into a character. The exposition of the ensuing tangible emotions is a result of deep emotional involvement and creates inspiring and motivating artistic freedom. This is the sacred space for an artist - where imagination, taste, smell, breath, feel, space, movement, and sound combine into a transformative experience of the powerful potential of emotions.
References
Biswas, G., Art as Dialogue: Essays in Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience, New Delhi: D.K. Printworld (P) Ltd.,1995
Chakravorty, P., Gupta, N. (Ed), Dance Matters: Performing India on Local and Global Stages, Routledge, 2012
Ingalls, D. H. H (Ed.), Ingalls, D. H. H., Masson, Patwardhan, M. V. (Trans.); Ānandavardhana. The Dhvanyāloka of Ānandavardhana with the Locana of Abhinavagupta, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990
Ray, S. N. Indian Literature Vol. 4, No. 1/2, Tagore Number (Oct. 1960/Sept.1961), pp. 155-162
Rele, K., Mohiniattam: The lyrical dance, Nalanda Dance Research Centre, 1992
Schwartz, S. L., Rasa: Performing the Divine in India, Columbia University Press, New York, 2004
Unni, N. P., Natyashastra (Text with Introduction, English Translation and Indices) (Set In 4 vols.) NBBC Publishers & Distributors (P) Ltd. New Delhi, 2014