Sumptuous Catalogue
THE title of Indian Ballet is, of course, a mistake; as the forms of Indian music and drama differ totally from those of our civilisa- tion. so its dances. in their style and their expression, have no resemblance to the centrifugal dynamics of our theatre dancing. Ram Gopal has put together a most impressive company of dancers, clad them in a sumptuous catalogue of silks, gauzes, tissues, and creates. adapts or arranges a widely varying list of dance numbers, about gods, demons, maniacs, shepherds and milkmaids! Its primary appeal for non-Indians must lie in its strange pictorial beauties; not only of the effect of good lighting on lime-green, apricot, rose and gold costumes which shimmeringly add depth to the quality of the dance movements, but also of the exotically formalised gestures so different from our anode of hand-and-facial play.
There is a lot 'of truly worthy effort, some gorgeously 'exotic' (in a Hollywood sense) performances by the three leading females, Kumudini, Shevanti, Satyavati, and a hearten- ingly large number of male dancers, many of whom are stylishly skilful. Mr. Gopal com- mendably dances mainly in ensembles or duets and only apoears'once as a soloist; his gestures and head movements, his footwork, are as neatly astonishing as ever. The orchestra is either ill-balanced. or is playing Indian music of alternate austerity and vulgarity that gives none of the aural pleasure formerly associated with Mr. Gonal's ventures. The eternal ques- tion attendant on this sort of dancing rises again : how far should its creator coinnromise its forms so that they give pleasure to and are understandable by. an alien audience: how strongly should he refuse to stylise the material into a mode comnrehensible to strangers') Mr. Gonal has. I think. fallen— but only very softly—between these . two stools. Perhans his big project The Leeend of the Tai Mahal (to be seen in London shortly) will give a definitive answer.
A. V. COTON
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