Seige of Kathak

Last night I attended the kathak performance. At six Anna and I hopped in an auto rickshaw which took us across town to a small theatre. While in India I’ve learnt to read the Hindi alphabet, even though I don’t understand what the words mean. However this comes in handy from time to time, like tonight where I was able to read the word ‘kathak’ on a banner, and so we knew we had arrived at the right place.

The performance was supposed to begin at 6:30, and we arrived at about 6:38, but of course any artistic performance must be late, and in India they must be rather late. We sat down in the theatre to wait. It was a fairly average theatre, with a raised stage, balcony etc. but like most buildings in India it had a layer of wear about it. Paint was chipped, the floor was bare cement, and my chair was missing the wooden top of the armrest. The heavy, dark red curtain had a subtle hint of age to it, and made me think of a fat matronly woman past the prime of her life, squeezed into the heavy and ridiculously obsolete fashion of her youth. I had time to figure out exactly what the curtains looked like because after sitting around for half an hour, we had to listen to people speaking in Hindi for another half an hour. Finally at about 7:30 the performance kicked off.

The lights turned off, Indian music floated through the theatre, a woman’s voice did more talking in Hindi. Then the lights came up and the dancing finally began. It was about half an hour long, which was kind of disappointing since we had to listen to half an hour of talking to get to it. We believe the dance was telling the story of Krishna, but what that story was we don’t know because the singing and talking was of course in Hindi. The majority of the dancing was done by eight ladies in bright Indian costume. When the music was fast it was enjoyable to watch, as they performed neat turns and graceful, flowing steps. However at times there were sequences where the ladies would be sitting down on the floor, and would be moving very, very slowly, perfectly synchronized, but perfectly boring. They would raise one arm – very slowly – and then the second. Then they would slowly, slowly bring them back to their heart. Then slowly, they turned their heads to look in a different direction.



So I would not call it a great performance, simply because the dancing did not really impress me, although it was entertaining enough, and a good experience. Besides you get what you pay for and the performance was free.

And now Such Strings as These steps fully into the world of modern blogging, with a video.