The undeniable sonic immediacy of bells
Ānanda: Dance of Joy
Christopher Gurusamy
Thursday 25th July, 2024
Sylvia Staehli Theatre
Dancehouse
With Outside In — Lecture Demonstration, Tuesday 23rd July, 2024
Performer/Choreographer: Christopher Gurusamy
Guru/Choreographer: Smt Bragha Bessell (Chennai)
Recorded Musicians: Aditya Madhavan (vocals), Madan Mohan (violin), Anirudh Athreya (ghanjira), Rakesh KP (nattuvangam), Kiran Pai (mridangam), MT Adithya (sound)
Dance of Joy, my response to Christopher Gurusamy’s Ānanda: Dance of Joy, drawn up especially for Fjord Review.
Bharatanatyam soloist, Christopher Gurusamy, describes his practice as appearing purely based on his traditional dance training, Bharatanatyam[i], an Indian classical dance that originated in the Hindu temples of Tamil Nadu in southern India. To the outside world, his practice appears as one governed by rigour, aesthetics, and geometry, guided by musicality, with an adherence to classicism, and textual-based development. But inside, to paraphrase Gurusamy, in his Outside In — Lecture Demonstration two nights before his performance, Ānanda: Dance of Joy, also at Dancehouse’s Sylvia Staehli Theatre, his practice is also based on Beyoncé, a tiny, but healthy obsession with The Little Mermaid, obscure 90s pop culture references, and growing up in Perth in a mixed-heritage home.
At both Tuesday’s lecture demonstration and Thursday’s performance, Ānanda: Dance of Joy, Gurusamy gives Radha the doe-eyes of The Little Mermaid’s Ariel. “My Radha is The Little Mermaid when she can’t talk; to me, that characterisation made sense.” As he lowers his chin, bats his lashes, and looks upwards, Gurusamy’s Ariel-Radha is a key to entering the dance I had not expected, and it makes perfect sense. For whether it is Ariel or Radha or Ariel-Radha, a universal hybrid of the two, the feeling is conveyed. Equally, the openness and warmth of the conversational lecture, in which he describes traditional composition and his own process as a performer, is within Ānanda: Dance of Joy, which begins with the exquisite, golden light-balancing beauty of primordial chaos in Origins, and concludes with the Thillāna, the final piece in a Bharatanatyam repertoire. Where, like Ariel, I might not have the words, as I dip into two things less familiar to me, the meaning is felt, and the openness and warmth of the invitation extended and the opportunity to sit and let it wash over me and see what bubbles up is one no-one should or could refuse. As Gurusamy slaps his foot to the floor to make an unmistakable thwack, repeatedly with precision of landing and in prefect time with the music, the many bells around his ankles[ii] become an instrument, for though the lecture and performance features recorded music, each jangle of the bells, and rap of the underside of his foot, adds to the impression. Like an arrow ascending, he springs skyward in defiance of gravity, and lands lightly to the sounds of his necklace falling against his chest and the undeniable sonic immediacy of bells.
Christopher Gurusamy’s Ānanda: Dance of Joy, photographed by Natya Ink by Sudha
Looking to the program notes for guidance, together with the introductory narration over the loudspeaker before each composition, in Sanskrit, Ānanda means “the place in which one finds bliss”, with the distinction being that bliss is not an emotional response or state, but rather a place. A place of deep consciousness of our very existence, as the longer ‘A’ sound, indicated by the umlaut, tells us. ‘Nanda’ is the root and together with the ‘Ā’ it grows to become the place in which you find joy. To Gurusamy, that place is found through performance and dance, in what he describes as a mixed bag of show pieces that he particularly loves and bring him, and, by turn and flutter, those that join him, a lot of joy. Orchestrated in the traditional way to set and format practice, inlaid with Gurusamy’s own story, upon a pathway to joy, my head spins with information and awe. One moment Gurusamy is describing Rupaul’s Snatch Game meets the ‘he said, she said’ drama of The Bold and the Beautiful, and the next I am seeing two indigo-hued birds upon his shoulders, cast by the blue stage lights above. Held in a ring of warm light, Gurusamy’s shadow-birds flitter across his kneeling form, and this melding of nights, worlds, experiences and time is breathtaking as about the theatre, sparks of joy flicker like gold from 12th century texts.
Bharatanatyam, a form that came from the gods, “has a lot of temple ancestry and religious ideas”, explains Gurusamy, but on “the other side of the coin is human expression and human love. It deals with physical dance, but it also deals with [human] emotions. These emotions are displayed through the use of the face, body, and hands”[iii], in that order. For though the hand gestures, be they fast, pointed or drawing a vertical line downwards to describe ‘in this time’, are mesmerising, look to the subtleties of the face first, if you want to understand what each composition is imparting. It is there, in the face, and it is from there that it flows through to the body and finally the hands.
It is about, I learn, I see, making the audience perceive what you are trying to make them perceive. “It isn’t about me feeling anything and making myself feel it for you to feel it. My main objective, as a performer, is to invoke rasa, an emotion, in you. What I do to get you to feel that is inconsequential. It’s about what happens to you in the audience”. And so Gurusamay swaps baby Krishna for thinking about puppies, and this revelation allows me to let go of any concerns of not understanding the history of what is unfolding before me.
In the quick slip of ideas, though, there is centuries. Gurusamay, as a solo performer, flips between many characters before my eyes, from the confidence of a nāyika on their way to meet their lover, lacing every gesture with ‘let them talk’ to those that might disapprove, in Yärukāgilum, to the seven characters within a lyrical fifth century CE composition, A Sangam Poem, in which a battle-weary elephant with a broken tusk is too embarrassed to return to the city[iv]. To quickly switch between characters, Gurusamay demonstrates how to attain an elongated male stance, as he clenches his butt cheeks, and throws back his shoulders a little more. Whereas when he is a female, “you are dropping it down a little bit at the shoulder, and when you are oscillating between two characters very quickly, you need that physical link to be able to swap”[v]. Together with a sound cue, such as high pitched for a female, Gurusamay playfully swings between “clench butt, don’t clench butt, clench butt, don’t clench butt”, and though I know this, during the performance it fades away. For each character is given an honesty and expressed from a place with the knowledge of the truth. “That’s what the mārga or path, the format we follow, is to make the audience feel very different things.” That is the path to the ultimate joy.
Christopher Gurusamy’s Ānanda: Dance of Joy, photographed by Natya Ink by Sudha
[i] Also spelled as Bharata Natyam, but using spelling consistent with Christopher Gurusamy’s website, https://www.christophergurusamy.com, accessed July 24, 2024.
[ii] “Ankle bells, also known as gejje, salangai, muvva, or gejjalu in South India and ghungroo up North, have captured the fancy of poet and king alike. The ornament, in its most delicate form as a golusu or payal, is indicative femininity and is a prescribed ornament for women in ancient texts such as Tiruvempavai of Manickavasagar.” Gayathri Iyer, ‘How Indian dancers move to the sound of the ankle bells: Call them by any name — salangai or ghungroo — they are a dancer’s best companion’, The Hindu, 26th April, 2024, https://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/dance/how-indian-dancers-move-to-the-sound-of-the-ankle-bells/article67841512.ece, accessed 24th July, 2024.
[iii] Christopher Gurusamy in interview with Richard Watts, ‘Scandinavian Film Festival, How do we remain? at the Melbourne Recital Centre, Ānanda: Dance of Joy and Two Remain’, Smart Arts podcast, RRR, https://www.rrr.org.au/explore/podcasts/smartarts/episodes/7563-scandinavian-film-festival-how-do-we-remain-at-the-melbourne-recital-centre-ananda-dance-of-joy-and-two-remain, accessed 25th July, 2024.
[iv] “In the war, I fought bravely to protect our empire. I broke down walls with my tusk and stamped on the heads of the fallen. I have broken my tusk and my nails are shattered... now I cannot enter our city as my many girlfriends will laugh at me!'” Christopher Gurusamy, Ānanda: Dance of Joy, Season 2 Dancehouse Program Notes, https://www.dancehouse.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Ananda-S2-Program-Notes.pdf, accessed 25th July, 2024.
[v] Christopher Gurusamy paraphrased from his Outside In — Lecture Demonstration at Dancehouse, 23rd July, 2024.
Image credit: Christopher Gurusamy’s Ānanda: Dance of Joy by Natya Ink by Sudha
