Kathak dancer Reshma Seetahal: ‘Dance is my devotion’

Gillian Cal­iste

Clas­si­cal East In­di­an dancer Resh­ma See­ta­hal re­mem­bers breath­ing a heavy sigh of re­lief be­tween smiles to the au­di­ence when she com­plet­ed her Rang Manch Pravesh at Queen’s Hall last month. The grad­u­a­tion dance recital marked her in­tro­duc­tion to the stage as a pro­fes­sion­al so­lo dancer or “kathakar” af­ter years of ded­i­cat­ed train­ing.

Push­ing through phys­i­cal pain, a law de­gree, a new ca­reer, and de­trac­tors, she be­came the first Kathak dancer in the coun­try to be sole­ly trained and pre­sent­ed by a Trinida­di­an gu­ru of the art form. Her teacher is recog­nised stage per­former, chore­o­g­ra­ph­er and pro­duc­er Dr Sat­nar­ine Balka­rans­ingh, who was for­mal­ly trained in Kathak at the Kathak Kendra in Del­hi dur­ing the 1970s. To com­plete such an achieve­ment, one has to be ready phys­i­cal­ly, emo­tion­al­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly, See­ta­hal shared with Sun­day Guardian re­cent­ly.

Fas­ci­nat­ed by its an­i­mat­ed, en­ter­tain­ing chore­og­ra­phy, See­ta­hal en­joyed Bol­ly­wood dance for most of her ear­ly years. She first ob­served Kathak, a ma­jor form of In­di­an clas­si­cal dance orig­i­nat­ing in In­dia’s north­ern state of Ut­tar Pradesh, af­ter see­ing Bol­ly­wood ac­tress Mad­huri Dix­it per­form in the 2002 Bol­ly­wood movie De­v­das.

“I was ab­solute­ly mes­merised by her style, tech­nique and grace. That cap­ti­vat­ed me. And the foot­work that went along with what she was do­ing, I didn’t com­plete­ly un­der­stand, but I was just blown away by it,” See­ta­hal re­called.

Reshma Seetahal performs a technical aspect of Kathak at her graduation recital marking her introduction to the stage as a professional Kathak dancer.

Orig­i­nal­ly, Kathak was per­formed by trav­el­ling “kathakars” al­so known as sto­ry­tellers. The an­cient form of dance used rhyth­mic move­ments to tell the epic tales from the Hin­du scrip­tures, the Ma­hab­hara­ta and the Ra­mayana. It lat­er be­came pop­u­lar in roy­al courts dur­ing the Mughal pe­ri­od when Mus­lims ruled much of South Asia from the 16th to the 19th cen­turies.

It was at Lak­sh­mi Girls’ Hin­du Col­lege that See­ta­hal was for­mal­ly in­tro­duced to In­di­an clas­si­cal dance.

When in­ter-house com­pe­ti­tions for Di­vali came around, Kathak, along with oth­er dance forms, Odis­si and Bharatanatyam com­plete­ly ab­sorbed her.

“Bol­ly­wood dance was no longer ful­fill­ing to me. I want­ed some­thing more out of In­di­an dance, some­thing that was of more sub­stance and mean­ing. I just knew that clas­si­cal dance was some­thing I want­ed to do,” See­ta­hal said.

She hap­pi­ly em­braced clas­si­cal In­di­an gen­res as a sub­ject at school and be­gan to de­vel­op her “mu­dras” or hand ges­tures, and her foot­work, telling “kathas” or sto­ries through her move­ments.

Amidst phys­i­cal set­backs due to a med­ical con­di­tion, See­ta­hal poured her en­er­gies in­to her stud­ies and pur­sued law at the Hugh Wood­ing Law School, St Au­gus­tine. She was called to the bar in 2016, but dance had kept its hold on the young per­former.

“I start­ed Kathak pro­fes­sion­al­ly un­der Dr Balka­rans­ingh dur­ing the sec­ond year of my law de­gree. (Be­fore that), my doc­tor had ad­vised me not to en­gage in con­tact sports or any­thing too vig­or­ous for some time,” she ex­plained.

Point­ing out that it took her ten years of train­ing to fi­nal­ly grad­u­ate as a stu­dent of Kathak, See­ta­hal said it was im­por­tant that dancers un­der­stood the prin­ci­ples of any of the eight forms of In­di­an clas­si­cal dance to gain struc­ture and dis­ci­pline in dance and oth­er as­pects of their lives.

“It was on­ly af­ter two years that I was al­lowed to go on a stage (as part of a group). My teacher told me I had to per­fect cer­tain things. There is a spe­cial dis­ci­pline re­quired for this. I did four lev­els of ex­ams and re­search pa­pers as well. You have to be pa­tient, you have to be un­der­stand­ing, and you have to be per­sis­tent.”

Re­flect­ing on the chal­lenges she had to over­come to re­alise her dream, she said she had to work through pains in her body, at­tend phys­io­ther­a­py ses­sions for a med­ical con­di­tion, bal­ance her pro­fes­sion­al life and fil­ter out the neg­a­tive com­ments of oth­ers who thought she was not good enough.

“That pe­ri­od of ad­ver­si­ty made me even more de­ter­mined to over­come those ob­sta­cles and to pur­sue the knowl­edge of this art form re­lent­less­ly.

“I want peo­ple to know that it doesn’t mat­ter what chal­lenges life presents you, once you have your goals and that faith, you can achieve any­thing. Stick to it, have that con­sis­ten­cy; that per­se­ver­ance to press on no mat­ter what. I had to keep re­mind­ing my­self of this,” she re­called.

Reshma Seetahal balanced law studies and a new career as an attorney with studying Kathak dance.

Giv­ing in­sight in­to as­pects of Kathak, See­ta­hal said be­cause of the Mughal rule, the In­di­an clas­si­cal dance be­came a com­bi­na­tion of Mus­lim and Hin­du themes, nu­ances and oth­er char­ac­ter­is­tics. She sees tech­nique, fa­cial and bod­i­ly ex­pres­sions, and dra­ma as pre­scribed by fa­mous In­di­an sage Bhara­ta Mu­ni in the per­form­ing arts text Natya Shas­tra as im­por­tant to Kathak. Move­ments are sharp, ver­ti­cal, round­ed and grace­ful with rapid and var­ied pirou­ettes or full spins on the heel. En­gag­ing foot­work or “tatkar” which re­sem­bles the el­e­gant foot­work of the Span­ish Fla­men­co is al­so an es­sen­tial el­e­ment of Kathak, as are “Nav Rasa” the nine deep emo­tions like love, sor­row, com­pas­sion, and courage con­veyed by the dancer.

A string of small metal­lic bells known as “ghun­groos” is used on each an­kle of the dancer to em­pha­sise the rhyth­mic foot move­ments of the dancer, adding to the dra­mat­ic ef­fect.

Cos­tumes are usu­al­ly vi­brant and at­trac­tive. Fe­male dancers wear colour­ful sa­rees that are tied to al­low for greater move­ment. Lehen­ga choli, a long, gath­ered A-line skirt and short mid-riff top which is some­times adorned with a du­pat­ta or veil, are worn by some dancers, while oth­ers pre­fer the Mughal-in­spired cos­tume of an an­garkha, a top, tight­ly fit­ting above the waist, con­sist­ing of an asym­met­ric open­ing and se­cured by thread ties or loops, and the churi­dar, tight-fit­ting trousers.

Male kathak dancers choose be­tween a dhoti with a pleat­ed or frilled cloth hang­ing from the waist to the knees or the Mughal-styled kur­ta churi­dar, a long, loose col­lar­less shirt and tight-fit­ting trousers, with caps.

As the Rang Manch Pravesh rep­re­sents the dancer’s as­cen­dance to the stage as a pro­fes­sion­al kathak artist, the dancer must demon­strate full com­mand of the reper­toire of Kathak, high­light­ing its tech­nique or “nrit” and ex­pres­sion “nritya”.

The first Rang Manch Pravesh of the Kathak Kala Sangam, See­ta­hal’s recital was pre­sent­ed be­fore a live au­di­ence by her teacher Balka­rans­ingh, along with her par­ents Mr and Mrs Kissoon See­ta­hal, as is the cus­tom with such events.

Reshma Seetahal in her Mughal expressive piece “Sargam Geet in Raag Malkauns” at her Rang Manch Pravesh.

Open­ing with a per­for­mance ded­i­cat­ed to Moth­er Dur­ga the Hin­du god­dess of strength and pro­tec­tion, and pre­sent­ing pieces across the Kathak reper­toire, in­clud­ing a Mughal piece in the Ur­du lan­guage about the pain and sep­a­ra­tion of a fe­male dancer in an an­cient em­per­or’s roy­al court, See­ta­hal was moved by the au­di­ence’s re­ac­tion. She was sur­prised by the im­pact her danc­ing could have on the emo­tions of oth­ers as some said they cried, she re­called.

See­ta­hal has pre­sent­ed and par­tic­i­pat­ed in var­i­ous lec­tures and con­fer­ences, in­clud­ing “Teach­ing Hin­di through the In­di­an Per­form­ing Arts” and has per­formed dances to as­sist with so­cial caus­es. In 2019, as an as­sis­tant in a work­shop with Ha­bana Dance Co of Cu­ba, she helped to show­case the sim­i­lar­i­ties be­tween Kathak and Fla­men­co. That year, See­ta­hal was al­so in­volved in the Caribbean Fes­ti­val of the Arts (Car­ifes­ta) IV and aid­ed Balka­rans­ingh in the pro­gramme “Men­tor­ing by the Mas­ters 2019” de­vel­oped by the Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Cul­ture and the Arts.

She rep­re­sent­ed T&T at a vir­tu­al con­fer­ence host­ed by the South African In­di­an Dance Al­liance, two years ago. She feels that lo­cal­ly, as a foun­da­tion dance, Kathak needs to be pro­mot­ed more.

“I think that clas­si­cal dance is over­shad­owed by the de­sire for Bol­ly­wood mu­sic which is dif­fer­ent al­though in Bol­ly­wood you would see some clas­si­cal dance. Bol­ly­wood mu­sic is pop­u­lar in Trinidad. A large sec­tor of those who fol­low In­di­an mu­sic would be ex­posed to that be­cause it is played on the ra­dio sta­tions quite of­ten. But what ac­com­pa­nies Kathak is Hin­dus­tani clas­si­cal mu­sic which is struc­tured. It has ‘taals’; fixed rhyth­mic beat cy­cles, and ‘ra­gas’; mu­si­cal sounds based on set rules.

“While I ap­pre­ci­ate that Trinidad and To­ba­go is mul­ti­cul­tur­al, in or­der to pre­serve some sem­blance of au­then­tic­i­ty of the In­di­an cul­tur­al art form, it should still ex­ist. In my re­spect­ful opin­ion, I don’t think it is suf­fi­cient­ly mar­ket­ed and we have very few teach­ers of the art form in Trinidad,” she said, adding that Balka­rans­ingh and artis­tic di­rec­tor of the Su­san Mo­hip Dance Com­pa­ny Su­san Mo­hip were the on­ly two lo­cal ones who cur­rent­ly did so.

Now qual­i­fied to teach oth­ers, she as­pires to join their ranks as a guardian of the In­di­an art form that has brought her spir­i­tu­al and emo­tion­al ful­fil­ment.

“When I em­braced the art of Kathak danc­ing, I fi­nal­ly un­der­stood the mean­ing of in­ner peace. Danc­ing takes me to a hap­py place and ful­fils me both emo­tion­al­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly. The way that I feel when I dance, I re­al­ly con­nect with a high­er spir­i­tu­al pow­er,” she said.

“I re­al­ly start­ed to ma­ture and to feel com­plete­ly ground­ed and com­fort­able with­in my­self. Dance is my de­vo­tion.”