Realizing Rama: An Experience in Transformation

It is Diwali in Chennai—the festival of lights celebrating Rama and Sita’s return to Ayodhya. The city is shrouded in gunpowder smoke from firecrackers and filled with puddles from the monsoon rain. Inside the Savera Hotel, a group of artists from ten countries have gathered to meet, talk and exchange ideas with the eminent contemporary Indian choreographer, Chandralekha.

The Ramayana is one of India’s greatest exports. It has ingratiated itself into the cultures of many different countries, localizing itself and forming the mainstay of expression, political thought, performing arts and architecture. The Ramayana means different things to different people. At its very core is a simple story of the universal conflict between good and evil. But because it is an epic, both pliable and rich, it has been open to a variety of interpretations.

The legend reverses and re-invents itself with a perspective that never remains linear. Its characters are not fixed in straitjacket roles; they explore many avatars and continue to evolve with a mode of narrative which changes from modern to traditional forms of dance, theater, mime, music, puppeteering and story-telling.

In ancient times kings took the name of Rama and named their kingdoms after Ayodhya because they wanted to model themselves after this paragon of virtue, to emulate the leadership of Rama. In our times, leaders seem to lack this need for a role model, stuck as they are in a mire of corruption and mediocrity. Realizing Rama, a dance-drama that is the Association of Southeast Asian Nation’s (ASEAN) flagship project which has toured the world, addresses that stark gap in our present history: the glory of where we have been and where we are trying to be.

For Chandralekha, the Ramayana is about separations, it is about turning anguish into poetry. Two thousand years ago, when the poet Valmiki wandered into the woods and witnessed the killing of a crouncha bird by a hunter, he experienced and felt all the anguish of the bird’s beloved, the one left behind. With this triggering image he wrote the Ramayana; hence from shoka (anguish) he made shloka (poetry). So for Chandralekha, the epic has always been about the ability to transform—a trans-formation that comes about because of separation.

To watch Realizing Rama, presented by the ASEAN Committee on Culture and Information and the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, in Chennai on the eve of Diwali was an exercise in realizing this transformation. Dancers from ten different countries came together under the brilliant choreographic skills of Denisa Reyes and presented a familiar story in an innovative, stunning new way, with a variety of styles and techniques, a dazzling array of costumes, a musical score that soared and a troupe of dancers that were harmonious and unified. In most collaborations of this scale, achieving harmony is probably the most difficult hurdle to overcome. But in this case, the synchronization and joy of the dancers were unmistakable. When joineries begin to blur, when there is fluidity in movement and when space and volume are altered, there begins an immediate connection between the dancers and the audience, a connection which is both rare and necessary for a performance to achieve that magical status.

Transformations were not merely restricted to spectators. On meeting the entire cast and crew, whether their involvement was on or off stage, one felt instinctively that it has been a transforming experience for them too, since their debut performance in Hanoi, in December 1998. Denisa Reyes commented that one of the initial problems was that of language and communication.

"They were all so shy," she said, "and I was so shy. So there we were, all of us too shy to talk! I thought how were we ever going to make anything happen?" Shyness can be written off as an Asian trait, but by that same measure, so can human warmth. It’s clear that they managed not only to overcome their shyness and language difficulties, but managed, through their unification, to create a spectacular show full of energy and warmth.

For my part, it was a sight to see how the shyness melted on that slightly soggy day in the Savera Hotel, how a group of strangers became friends over wine and cake and a legend. Before long people were singing, demonstrating ways to make puppets jump and twirl, showing off the wonderful textures and weaves of their national costumes and explaining their own interpretations of the Ramayana and what it meant to them. For many, it was important to present Realizing Rama in India, the home of the original epic, and for the audience to respond positively to it, which they most definitely did.

On the way back home, Chandralekha remarked, "Those monkeys were so wonderful." Perhaps, because they targeted her in the audience and presented her with a banana, but also perhaps because they were simplest in their costume and most powerful in movement. What was more wonderful was to meet in a cultural forum which was both unique and unrestrained, to talk about the unifying elements of Asian countries, our commonalities and our ways of expression.

Chandralekha has always said that to be modern one does not need to be western. As Asian countries, we are rich with concepts, we have histories and stories which can provide enough material for our understanding; but history is not meant to stagnate, tradition is not meant to go unexamined.

If we want to be in the business of creating, as artists we must find new means of expression, new modes of narrative. We can use our ancient texts, but we must also ask that most important question—What does this mean in our times? That is the true meaning of contemporization. That is the path for true transformations, those that shine like luminous Diwali lamps which greet a valiant prince and his virtuous wife after their long exile away from home.

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The author is a free-lance writer and a dancer who works with Chandralekha in Chennai.