Kathak by Pratap Pawar, Guru Puja Seminar, Gmunden, Austria 06/07/1986

Today we had a very nice session of puja in the morning, and to celebrate that session in an artistic way, we have arranged this beautiful program of Kathak dancing for you.

Now Kathak word, as you know, comes from the word Katha. Katha means the story. It means the story. My God bless you. And the story is to be told, and this is a very, very ancient style of dancing, which was practiced in the northern part of India, and then part of it also went to the south, and they used it in a different way. Now Kathak is so ancient and so traditional, that it has gone various changes and various aspects, have been expressed in this style of dancing. To begin with, it was originally done to express the stories about the gods and goddesses, and their different way of dealing with human beings. Then gradually it became subtler and subtler. Then they started performing also the dances about the Parabrahma Shakti and all those things. Later on when the Muslims came to north India, they introduced their delicate style to this style of dancing, and one of the Nawabs of Lucknow was very much fond of Kathak dancing, and he himself introduced so many ideas in this.

So also the romanticism, not the variety of western style, but the last is the relationship between the power and its deity, and all those were performed beautifully during that time. All the delicate ways of expression were acquired, so it added another kind of a dimension to Kathak style. Now this style has got the beauty that it is woven with the footwork, as you people have those tap dancing. It has a tremendous type of an intricate, complicated tap dancing. You can say one side, but tap dancing you don’t do with the face anything with that. I mean the face remains the same. But in this the face has the bhavas, or the feelings are expressed through the face, different bhavas. Then also the gait, how a person walks in different moods, in different professions, in different styles. So the gait is also very important. So it is not only the tap dancing, which is, you will see at the end, mostly it builds up at the end of it, when it becomes a very fast dancing.

But in between you will see the different gaits, then the different moods, see how they are expressed. All this is shown through the movement of the body, through the going forward, backward, and everything has a meaning. Apart from that the face changes with every feeling, with one feeling say of anger. Then suddenly the another feeling of love, and this can be expressed very clearly. Sometimes one person does both the actions, like the mother of Krishna and the child of Krishna, would be the same person, and they can act. But sometimes two persons do this. So I am very happy that we have Sahaja Yogi, Matthews you know, he has taken to this dancing, and there are so many other Sahaja Yogi, Pedro and other people who are learning Kathar dancing, which they find it very interesting. But it’s a study and a tremendous discipline, an Indian dancing or any Indian instrument, or any Indian music or paintings or any art, cannot be learned without proper disciplining yourself. You have to have a tremendous discipline and very hard work. Indian music as you know, people have to sing for hours together, to get to the stage even.

So it is not just that people can do it without any practice. So the technique has to be learned, and spontaneity works it out, the technique in a beautiful way. Now everybody will be surprised that in Kathar dancing, the tabla that is played, the avartanas, the movement of the percussions are fixed. But the number of these fixed, say, one tala is, you can go on with it, and you have to come to the first note. Any number of times you might move, but you have to come to the first note, and it is all built up. The whole, what we call the bol, is the sound of the tabla, whatever are the different sounds of the tabla, are built up with the sound of the bells in the feet. So it is a very intricate science, and requires very good character, and very steady mind, and a very upright level of understanding. Otherwise you cannot acquire this great art. I am very happy today that we have such a great artist like Mr. Pawar with us, who is a very well-known, of a very high repute in India, a person who is going to show us this dancing. Most surprising is that he is from Maharashtra, and you all love Maharashtra very much, and you will always like Maharashtrians, and he has so many qualities of those Maharashtrians, and he is from the same caste as myself, is what you call the Marathas, he is also a Maratha, and the beauty about the whole thing, I feel, is that Maharashtrians, I have never seen them taking to Kathak dancing, because Maharashtrians being very orthodox about dancing, as this Kathak style came to Maharashtra, the cheap women learnt it, and started using it for tamashas and all that, though they are also very great dancers, I must say, in our folklore.

So the respectable people didn’t think proper for their daughters or their family people to see that dancing, because according to them it was cheap type dancing, but even that is the same style as Kathakis, but not to that extent, so much of a formal education and so much of traditional training in that is given. So it is more manoeuvring they do, and they dance in that fashion, same style as the Kathak style. So this style was later on also, as I told you, was taken up in the south, and they use it for their dancing called as Tilana. The same style is used there, is from the word Tarana, because when these people play on the harmonium, that or that tune is used as the Tarana, what they have picked up, and that’s why they call it Tilana. So there is a very big integration of various cultures in this dance, and Mr. Pawar has been so beautifully able to grasp the essence of it, and he’s a Sahaja Yogi too, and his wife is another Sahaja Yogi, and they are great dancers, and I really admire the way they precisely, they know the art, and the way they expose it, and the way they do it spontaneously. It’s very remarkable that we should have such a great artist, so well known, among us to celebrate the Guru Puja, and his wife being not so well, and his daughter, whose name is Asavari Pawar, is going to dance, and she’s also another very great dancer. So we have on Tabla, Mr. Misran, whom you have heard many times, who is another great, very well known Tabla player. You can see from the way he has acquired this great art of playing Tabla. Tabla is, as you see, is a simple thing, made out of a hollow wood, and covered with a parched, you can say a parched skin, and a little bit of this black thing is nothing, but like a carbon is put on top, and the way it is played at different points by putting your fingers on the percussion, the way it is done, I mean the amount of varieties people can create out of simple things is really so remarkable, and to practice it one has to really dedicate to it, and one has to have really rhythm within yourself. So the whole thing is interwoven between each other, and it’s a very beautiful blending.

With our Sahaja Yoga we have to say that it’s a great blessing, that such a great artist like him has taken to Sahaja Yoga. It’s a very big thing for us. There are many other artists we have who have taken to Sahaja Yoga. As you know, those, as like Debuchodri is another Sahaja Yogi we have. We have another one, Jasraj, and also we have Pandit Bhimsen Joshi who is another artist, Karekar is another artist. There are so many artists who are musicians who have taken to Sahaja Yoga. But as far as the dancing is concerned, I will give the highest marks to Mr. Pawar who is taking so much interest in it. By God’s grace today he could make it to come here, and we all should give him a great hand for coming down and honoring this occasion. Thank you. First of all he will be doing Saraswati Vandana.

Saraswati you know very well and he will be doing Saraswati Vandana and perhaps it may be the same Shloka which you know where they describe. Saraswati with the white dress and the way she is sitting with the Veena although the descriptions are shown by various movements.