Achilles-Review

THE ILIAD : GREEK MYTHOLOGY IN KATHAKALI

by Swadhin Pro­duc­tions (Co-pre­sen­ta­tion : Centre de créa­tion pour musique et danse – Danse Kalashas/Ensemble Maha­poo­ram, Montreal)

revie­wed by mar­cus tan
date : 8 oct 2000
time : 7:30pm
venue : the wtc audi­to­rium (Sin­ga­pore)
rating : ****1/2

A CROSS-CULTURAL TROJAN HORSE
Accor­ding to T.S. Eliot, all works of art, in order to be great, must seek their mea­ning from and be ens­con­ced in the « tra­di­tion ».« No poet, no artist of any art, has his com­plete mea­ning alone. His signi­fi­cance, his appre­cia­tion is the appre­cia­tion of his rela­tion to the dead poets and artists » (“Tra­di­tion and the Indi­vi­dual Talent”). If we agree with Eliot that all works of art are haun­ted by the spi­rits of dead fore­fa­thers, Swadhin Pro­duc­tions” dra­ma­ti­sa­tion of Greek poet and lyri­cist Homer’s epic poem “The Iliad” should not only invoke their super­na­tu­ral pre­sence but inevi­ta­bly seek its appro­val from these spectres of autho­ri­ty. This pro­duc­tion, howe­ver, over­turns this dic­tum. Pre­sen­ted as Katha­ka­li, a tra­di­tio­nal Indian dance form that is almost three hun­dred years old, the pro­duc­tion brings about not only a unique mee­ting of two great cultures and tra­di­tions but creates an ima­gi­na­tive space, cor­po­rea­li­sed in per­for­mance, of an unk­nown dimen­sion that fuses both Hin­du mys­ti­cism and Clas­si­cal mytho­lo­gy. Katha­ka­li, lite­ral­ly mea­ning « sto­ry-play », is a dance-dra­ma that ori­gi­na­ted in the 17th cen­tu­ry, a time paral­lel to Sha­kes­peare, in a small South Indian state cal­led Kera­la. Katha­ka­li can then right­ly be said to be an Eas­tern equi­va­lent of Sha­kes­pea­re’s plays, which fuse a kalei­do­scope of art forms, for this Indian dance-form com­bines har­mo­nious­ly the five art forms of lite­ra­ture (nar­ra­tive), music, pain­ting, acting and dance in an inte­gra­ted and seam­less matrix to tell the story.
“THE ILIAD is cer­tain­ly a visual spec­tacle that awes and cap­ti­vates. It is none­the­less alie­na­ting for those who are unable to com­pre­hend its unique ges­tu­ral language”	THE ILIAD dra­ma­tises one of Wes­tern canon’s grea­test epics, “The Iliad”; the dance-dra­ma enacts the middle books of this epic poem which nar­rates the renow­ned feud bet­ween Hec­tor and Achilles. The dance-dra­ma begins with the mee­ting of Hec­tor and Andro­mache after the for­mer’s return from the bat­tle­field. This is fol­lo­wed by the conquests of Patro­clus against the Tro­jans, which inevi­ta­bly leads to his confron­ta­tion with and death at the hands of Hec­tor. The two-and-a-half hour pro­duc­tion ends with Achilles” cruel ven­geance on Hec­tor after the for­mer’s acqui­si­tion of Hephaes­tus” magi­cal shield. Ima­gine Sha­kes­pea­re’s dra­ma­tic action and soli­lo­quies without words and you will come to unders­tand the dif­fi­cul­ty that is yet the beau­ty of Katha­ka­li. Katha­ka­li pre­sents its sto­ry pure­ly via a cultu­ral­ly spe­ci­fic kine­sic code that is deli­ca­te­ly inter­wo­ven with musi­cal codes. From the quiet « soli­lo­quies » of Hec­tor and the magi­cal visions of Achilles to the tense com­bats bet­ween the two, the dan­cers employ an exten­sive reper­toire of facial expres­sions and ges­tures to nar­rate a tale that would have been told ver­bal­ly in conven­tio­nal dra­ma. The entire sto­ry is pre­sen­ted via ges­ture, move­ment and expres­sion ; the music of the per­cus­sion, often accom­pa­nied subt­ly by chan­ting, then guides the vie­wer along by esta­bli­shing the cli­maxes through an inces­sant drum­ming that paral­lels the tem­po of the rising and decli­ning moments of tension.
The tel­ling of a Wes­tern Clas­sic through Indian dance becomes a unique and exhi­la­ra­ting expe­rience of cultu­ral inter­sec­tion [inter-bor­ro­wing/in­te­rac­tion]. Crea­tor and Direc­tor Richard Trem­blay manages to weave the ges­tures of Indian dance with Wes­tern sways and swerves. The expres­sion « East meets West » is a phrase that calls to mind the novel­ties of fusion food and blond hair on Asian heads, and is per­haps a cli­ché that is insuf­fi­cient to clas­si­fy the cultu­ral den­si­ty of THE ILIAD. Rather, Trem­blay’s ILIAD exem­pli­fies the phrase « East confronts West ». The colo­ni­sed now re-scribes and rein­ter­prets the text of the colo­ni­ser in what can be seen as a post-colo­nial ges­ture of the over­tur­ning and rede­fi­ni­tion of a « great » tra­di­tion. Homer’s epic poem becomes unre­co­gni­sable when sta­ged as Katha­ka­li for Katha­ka­li extracts the epic and heroic ele­ments and trans­forms them into uni­ver­sals that can be iden­ti­fied across cultures. THE ILIAD reminds us that as much as Homer has his heroes and heroines, the Indian culture pos­seses its great tra­di­tions such as the Mahabha­ra­ta. When sta­ged, the Wes­tern epic is no grea­ter than the Eas­tern. Appre­cia­ted as per­for­mance, THE ILIAD is cer­tain­ly a visual spec­tacle that awes and cap­ti­vates. It is none­the­less alie­na­ting for those who are unable to com­pre­hend its unique ges­tu­ral lan­guage. But per­haps in that pro­cess of alie­na­tion, the text of the colo­ni­sed severs its umbi­li­cal cord with the colo­ni­ser’s. The haun­ting spectre of Homer is igno­red as THE ILIAD manages to make strange to the wes­tern vie­wer what is scrip­ted as an arche­type of the great Wes­tern tradition.

Dance archi­ved docu­ments : Annexes