I recently saw this dance show called “Mythologies Retold” conceptualised and produced by Sandhya Raman in artistic collaboration with Geeta Chandran, and it was truly wonderful. Not only were the dancers’ physical movements emotionally moving (I love getting that feeling of chills down the spine from dance), but the themes were provocative and inspiring.
The basic line of questioning is ‘Where have the female goddesses gone? Where has the mother spirit gone? Is their departure the cause for the subjugation of women?’
Yet the work is not simply spiritual in nature. At the climax, the audience is brought abruptly back to the reality of sex selective abortion and female infanticide. The repetitive song at the end urges women that we must struggle together and for each other’s rights to make our own decisions and act for ourselves.
In the words of Raman:
The Mythologies Retold journey began when we, members of Rasaja (an educational and cultural foundation that seeks to draw attention to the varied arts and traditions of modern India), were admiring the vast collection of paintings that its founder Jaya Appasamy had collated in her lifetime. Currently in the safekeeping of the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), these paintings provided a wealth and welter of the colours of India and also urged us towards seeking answers to our questions in older traditions from which colour and representation had evolved.
Appasamy’s collection has innumerable paintings that celebrate female goddesses. The story we have put together here is about the origins of these goddesses. Our attempt is not to take our viewers into a space of ritualized worship and adoration, but to imaginatively visualize these goddesses as symbols that liberate and renew and celebrate female energy, from the beginning of time – all the way to now!
Click here for more on the Rasaja Foundation, an educational, scientific and cultural institution created in 1984 by the late Jaya Appasamy, a renowned artist, art historian and art critic.
