Unworldly

Yesterday, I had the privilege of attending another Kathakali performance at Kalakshetra, an internationally recognized school of South Indian dance. (Please refer to my previous post entitled ‘Kalakshetra’.) This time the troupe was performing Shakespeare in its own inimitable way - Othello, to be exact. The performance was held inside a huge semi-open tent constructed improbably with a virtual flurry of wooden supporting beams, all tied together at the ends with jute. The seemingly haphazard construction was soon forgotten once the performance started. It was in every way top-notch and thoroughly professional.

As Kathakali players do not speak, the dialogue is sung in Malayalam by two singers at the back of the stage. A projector and screen on the right side gave a translation in English.

Kathakali is native to the state of Kerala located on the opposite Indian (Malabar) coast. Top dancers and musicians from there were invited to perform at this festival that lasted several days. Last night’s performance was the last.

Kathakali is said to be an expression of the ‘unworldly’. It is highly stylized (much like Japanese kabuki theater), involving largely small gestures – hand and finger contortions; eye movements, and shivering – and flamboyant, bell-shaped costumes. Make-up can take up to four hours to apply; dancers can only dance with broken arches; the whites of the eyes of the principals must appear red… The demands on performers are endless.

If you were to go to Kerala to see Kathakali, you would have to pay a pretty sum for the privilege. Performances there are usually held in temples at night by the light of a single oil lamp with as many as 63 wicks ablaze. The temples are generally off-limits to non-Hindus. Therefore, Kathakali can only be seen by foreign visitors when and if a tour operator is able to make it a part of a (rice boat) inland waterways package. Here at Kalakshetra it was free – and absolutely, wonderfully ‘unworldly’, made even more so by the continual swooping of bats among the tenuous rafters.

Peter Koelliker; pkoelliker8@yahoo.com