Ragini Devi and Indian Dance

Inspired partly by the nautch and partly by the glimpses of classic Dance which Indian Art has preserved, attempts have been made in recent years to recover the lost art of Nritya. Many are the connoisseurs that attempt a new orientation in Dance and every shade of preference is represented among them, from the aggressive Europeanism of ‘Menaka’ to the eclecticism of Uday Shankar and the provincialism of Tagore, who harks to the idiom of folk-art. It is too soon to appraise the merits of the various exponents, but generally the performances do not rise very much above the journalese of Art, though here and there artists have shown themselves capable of efforts of sustained aesthetic quality by way of exception. Ragini Devi belongs to the class of exceptions: she has all the spiritual qualities necessary for the pioneer; humility, patience, imagination and above all, enthusiasm similar to that which originally created the art. Art to her is no mere hobby or pastime, but is a passion–a religion almost, sacred and ceremonious. Though a native of America and brought up on entirely different conceptions of Art, she has sensed that India's message to the world lay in her Music and Dance–Music with all the colorfulness of painting, and Dance with all the plasticity of sculpture, but with an added dimension of movement; and has taken it upon herself to understand and interpret it, because India was ‘thinking of something else.’

In pioneering work of the kind Ragini Devi has undertaken, what matters most is not knowledge or perseverance, invaluable as these are in the revival of forgotten art, but the spiritual ground, the attitude of mind which the pioneer brings to bear on the investigation, an imaginative sympathy capable of overcoming any barrier without which knowledge itself is of no avail. This essential requisite is what many eminent Orientalists lack, in spite of their great erudition and industry, and which Ragini Devi possesses almost without her being conscious of it; and the success of her expositions is in a great measure due to this. The other requisites of the pioneer are acquirable, and there is not the least doubt that she will acquire them in due course.

European students of Indian Music and Dance find to their dismay, with the first lesson, that what looked simple and spontaneous is really the result of arduous and highly sophisticated discipline and that, of all languages, the language of Art is the most difficult to comprehend. Artistic Europe has never understood artistic Asia, and misunderstanding is greatest in the art of Music where prepossessions and predilections alike prohibit mutual intercourse: Europe craves for a harmonic perspective for every melodic utterence, while Asia finds, in that very perspective, an irritating distraction. It is nothing short of a feat if Ragini Devi obliterates her European personality to the point of Indianising dances in professedly European style, and assumes another pair of ears, so to speak, and another attitude and sings Bageshri as if to the music born, and reveals a flexibility of fingers and feet which not many among the trained artists can boast of. She effectively demonstrated that Dance is but song made visible, because the term Sangita denoted not Music alone but instrumental symphonies as well, no less than Dance; she stirred hopes in some of us of staging Bhavabhuti and Kalidasa in the very manner in which they were staged thousands of years ago. Ragini Devi has music in her soul; people like her are not to be met with every day.

Radha and Krishna are themes eternally favoured by Indian Art and Literature. At the sound of the flute, the Tamil poet sings, the cowherdesses clustered round the Dark One like flowers in a garland; and as, fingers cunningly plying, eye squinting, mouth pouting, brow upraised and thoughtful, Govinda played on the flute, the tribe of birds left their haunts and circled round Him and stood motionless like felled trees, and the tribe of cows with folded head, shook not even their ears lest they miss a particle of the song. Or, as the Prem Sagar recounts, "a cowherdess blending her voice with the sound of His flute, was singing in treble key; and when a cowherdess having stopped the sound of the flute, was bringing from her throat its entire note in exact agreement, then Krishna remained fascinated with delight as a child beholding its image in the mirror stands rivetted." Ragini Devi is happy in themes which Art has endeared, and she brings to bear on them a technique based on no negligible discipline and a fluency of gesture and command over Indian rhythms, truly astounding. In Paniharin, she described the pranks of Krishna. In ‘Radha's Response,’ it was the shy, hesitant but ecstatic surrender. Her executive skill was no less marked when interpreting the ‘Boat Song.’ She indicated twilight and dawn and the breeze bearing the boat down the river, and by graceful undulations of shoulders and arms, recaptured the rhythm of the flowing waters; and by a lightning change of facial expression and gesture, she denoted renunciation. The rhythm of youth embodied the surging emotions of girlhood–full and overflowing as a jar of water. Interpretations such as these to the accompaniment of choice music of the kind Azeez Khan and his talented assistants provided, and punctuated by the most captivating melodies of the North, leave memories that abide ever.

Of proper height and form, and with a face transparently innocent and Madonna-like, vibrant with mood and reverie, and a voice that imparts new significance to Music, she has all the essentials that an exponent of Dance should have, She is thoroughly conversant with Hindu achievement in the sphere of the fine arts and is interested in bringing together the various traditions of Art with a view to weave them into the fabric of the Dance of the future. Her ambition is to spiritualise the art by rescuing it from the banalities of the professional dancing girl, with whom it is largely a feat of memory practised for the end of gain. She intends further to revive the forgotten dances of Tandava, Lasya, etc., by a study of the available literary and art material and, as a first step, to start a centre for the study of Dance where respectable girls may take lessons. No one need doubt her gifts of mind and heart which make her eminently competent for the work.