Bharatnatyam legend Leela Samson rues Kolkata’s cultural decay

KOLKATA: Legendary Bharatnatyam exponent Leela Samson is in Kolkata to conduct a five day workshop on the classical dance form at the Rabindranath Tagore Centre of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR). The workshop will be followed by a panel discussion featuring experts who will explore ways to popularize Indian classical dance forms on Thursday.A performance by Samson’s Spanda Dance Company will be the grand finale of Samson’s stay in Kolkata.
The workshop is the result of the efforts of two classical danseuses, Jita Roy Chowdhury and Sunita Chowdhurie, to inject a much-needed dose of energy in to the classical dance scene in Kolkata by getting eminent and serious gurus of various Indian classical dance forms from across the country to impart some of their knowledge and enrich the studies of dancers and dance lovers of this city. Jita and Sunita are students of Guru Thankamani Kutty who established Kalamandalam in Kolkata in 1968 along with Guru Govindan Kutty.
The workshop, which started on Saturday, will end on Wednesday and will have two sessions everyday with 30 students each. At an informal interaction with some media persons on Friday evening, Samson said that such workshops could go a long way in enthusing dancers and dance students in the city and injecting a sense of excitement and purpose among them. “It is not enough to get all the technical aspects of a dance like the mudras correct. It is very important for a dancer to express the sense of the dance from the depths of his or her heart and soul,” she said. Samson, a Padmashree who has served as chairperson of the Sangeet Natak Akademi and the Central Board of Film Certification as well as director of the Kalakshetra Foundation.
The panel discussion will feature renowned surgeon Kunal Sarkar who heads the Kolkata Sukriti Foundation, veteran journalist and film critic Swapan Mullick who was director of SRFTI, music director Jyotishka Dasgupta and Manipuri dance exponent Priti Patel, besides Samson. “This city (Kolkata) was once a beacon for all of us in the world of art and culture. There was an exciting vibrancy in the art, dance, music and theatre scene of this city. Unfortunately, there is a lull here now. Within a space of a couple of decades, the Gurus in the field of art and culture in Kolkata have passed away and new talents haven’t flourished because of the inward-looking nature that has become typical of this city,” said Samson.
Samson, who trained at Kalakshetra in Chennai, established by the visionary Rukmini Devi Arundale, under many celebrated gurus, recalled that Kolkata used to have many excellent classical music and dance events in the past. Drawing a distinction with Chennai, she said that the ‘sabha culture’ in the southern city where every locality supports its own artistes and are strong patrons of art and culture have kept classical dance and music alive there. “This is the case in Maharashtra too. Unfortunately, in West Bengal, local communities and neighbourhoods are no great patrons of the arts,” she said.