The Indian Monks’ Dance, Flowering With the Aid of Women

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/17/arts/dance/sattriya-the-dancing-monks-of-assam.html

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PHILADELPHIA — In the West, our idea of monastic ritual involves prayer and quiet reflection. But there are monasteries in Assam, in the far reaches of northeastern India, where prayer has always been, and continues to be, expressed through dance. The monks in these communities, or sattras, perform with and for each other, and for the deity.

Sattriya, as this dance form is known, became one of the eight official classical dance forms of India only in 2000 — since then, its visibility has grown beyond the monastery walls. This weekend, a group of monks who live at a remote island monastery in Assam will perform an evening of Sattriya at the Dancing the Gods Festival at Symphony Space, part of the World Music Institute’s performance series.

Billed as the Dancing Monks of Assam, they’ll be joined by a pair of dancers who represent one of the most significant modern advances in an art form that dates back to the 15th century: the inclusion of women. Traditionally, Sattriya — which was developed within the Krishna-worshipping, all-male monasteries of Assam — excluded them. Women could not even enter the prayer halls where these dances were performed.

Since the mid-20th century, though, a growing number of monks have begun to teach Sattriya in Assamese towns and cities, and as far as Delhi; three of the performers in the group traveling to New York now live and teach outside the monastery. In a surprising twist, many students have been women. Their ranks include Madhusmita Bora, 40, and Prerona Bhuyan, 35, the founders of the Philadelphia-based Sattriya Dance Company, both of whom studied Sattriya in their hometowns in Assam after training in other dance forms.

“Sattriya wasn’t cool back then,” Ms. Bora joked, reflecting on those early years. But, she said, she was powerfully drawn back to a tradition that she had witnessed since her childhood in Madhabgaon, the small Indian village where her family is from. As she put it, simply: “It is who I am.”

The dances are graceful and incantatory, without the strong, rhythmic footfalls that characterize other Indian forms like Bharatanatyam and Kathak. (Unlike in those dances, there are no ankle bells.) The musical accompaniment consists of drums and cymbals — occasionally played by the dancers — flute, voice and sometimes violin or harmonium.

Some of the dances are purely abstract. Others contain clear symbolism, like one representing the 10 incarnations of Krishna, or tell episodes from the life of the god. The monks are trained to depict either male or female characters; each gender has its own distinct movement quality and set of poses.

Now that women can also perform Sattriya, they too choose which characters they prefer to represent onstage. Ms. Bhuyan, for example, tends to depict male characters. “I am more precise with my movements, which is more suited for the male characters,” she said, “and Madhu is more graceful.”

“The main characteristic of the movement,” Ms. Bora said, “is what we call ‘ulah’ — fluidity, like waves in a river.” The sensuality that is so prevalent in many classical Indian dance forms is absent here. “In this tradition,” Ms. Bora explained, “Krishna is not seen as a consort or a lover, but as a child. The love you have for a child is so pure — it is like the love you have for the Lord.” The mood is described as one of bhakti, or devotion.

The participation of women has brought a flowering of the form. “The style has acquired sophistication,” Sunil Kothari, a scholar of Indian dance who has written extensively about Sattriya, said in an email from New Delhi. “It was inevitable that it would be influenced by some elements of other dance styles.”

“It’s women who took Sattriya out of Assam,” Ms. Bhuyan said last week at the studio near Philadelphia’s City Hall that she and Ms. Bora use for rehearsals. (These monks have toured to France, England, China and around India.) And it is through the efforts of Sattriya Dance Company, with the help of a grant from the Pew Center, that the monks have been able to travel to Philadelphia and New York as part of their first United States tour.

It is a long way from home; it would be hard to overstate the remoteness of the monastery, Uttar Kamalabari Sattra, where these monks spend their lives. Majuli, where it is located, is a luxuriant island in the Brahmaputra River, close to the border with China and Myanmar. To get there from New York, it takes three days, including a flight to Delhi, plus another 2.5-hour flight from Delhi to Guwahati, the largest city in Assam, followed by a seven-hour drive and a boat ride.

That is where this Krishna-worshiping order was established in the 15th century by a poet-saint called Sankaradeva, who also introduced the practice of music-making and dance that is at the heart of the Sattriya tradition. The monks there practice the arts every day, alongside their farming duties. “I wake up at 5 a.m., study and rehearse until 7,” Satya Nath Borah, who was given to the monastery at the age of 1 1/2 after the death of his father, explained in an email. (He’s now 18.) Then, in the afternoon, “after we bring the cows home from the field, we shower and go for our classes in music, dance and theater. By 9 p.m. everyone goes to bed.” In some ways, though, modern life has reached the monastery; many of the monks have smartphones.

Once a year, for a month (called Bhado Maah, or “fifth month”), the monks perform continuously in the prayer hall. “There’s hardly anyone present except for the monks themselves,” Ms. Bora said.

Though she and Ms. Bhuyan have become close to the monks during many visits to the monastery, one barrier still stands between them. According to the rules of the order, the devotees cannot share the stage with women. But they have found an accommodation. Over the course of the evening at Dancing the Gods, they will take turns onstage in alternating numbers, from the introductory invocation to the final offering to Krishna.

It’s important, both to the monks and to their female collaborators, that the rules and the spiritual dimension of the performance be preserved, no matter how far from an Assamese prayer hall. “When I dance,” Ms. Bora said, “I’m transported back to the shrine on Majuli island. That is what drives me.”