There's a corny story, which you've probably all run across in Reader's Digest, about a visiting group of Chinese (nationalist, to be sure) invited to hear the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Like all visitors to America, they were asked by their hosts which part they liked best. "Oh," they replied, "we liked the part in the beginning without the conductor." Last night the situation was reversed, as Shanta Rao won over her audience by the swagger and delight with which she boldly took her bows, first swinging her arms high to either side of her body, then bowing low in that most graceful of Eastern gestures, touching her folded hands to her forehead.
The program, with extensive notes, tried to help a Western audience which stood in need of help; but who expects a miracle from program notes? "As always in Mohini Attam, the dance by its comment essentializes the story from the point when Dharmaraj, chief of the Pandavas, is tricked by the evil chief of the Kauravas into gambling away his birth-right. . ." "Like Zeus, Krishna had many loves among the heavenly nymphs and the Gopis." Even Western mythology, in the drama of Sophocles, for example, is an acquired taste for us these days. It may have brought the Greeks a catharsis of pity and terror, but today only classicists have the skill to be moved by Greek spectacle.
I must confess I liked best the simplest of the dances, performed not by Shanta Rao herself but by her assistants, Chandramati and Padma. Imagine if you can an Indian Sophia Loren, as my companion in the audience suggested, and a lovely doll-like Oriental performing a dance of intense flirtation with the audience, whispering silently to them, looking them in the eye. One was sultry, pouting; the other prim and coquettish; yet both were dancing the same steps. When one glared out of the corner of her eye, the other peeked; yet both moved their eyes at the same time, with the same speed. When Western dancers dance the same steps, they usually manage, if precise, to look like a chorus line; if out of step, like bunglers. Perhaps it is the Indian refusal to split dance and drama that allows their performers so much freedom within a rigid pattern. The dancers needn't be exactly together, since the steps are only backdrop for emotion.
Shanta Rao is an obvious master of the Eastern technique, which requires supreme flexibility of the fingers, hands, and arms. Her face can tell any feeling, and with her undisputed skill she is well-suited to revive the Indian classics, some of which have not been danced for fifty years. Even if Miss Rao's medium is strange to Western audiences, her artistry is apparent.
