I don’t even want to
look at what the official air index is this morning. Let’s just say it isn’t sunny. Out this morning, off to the gym, smelt like
coal. The way it does when you fly into the
Beijing airport when you haven’t been here in a while. You step off the plane and first breath the
taste is as if someone slapped a dirty coal mining blanket across your
breathing passages. Thick air, dry
ground. Kids are psyched, as their big winter holiday is coming. It’s a modest five weeks long for Chinese New
Year. Wish me luck. I have no idea what we’re going to do with
all that “free” time.
Had mentioned a few posts back about my daughters’ study of
Barat Natyam, the remarkable South Indian dance form from Tamil Nadu. I wanted to show her something of Tanjore
Balasaraswati who was the most famous dancer of the form. I had the remarkable good fortune to study
with her younger brother T. Vishwanathan at Wesleyan University in my freshman
year, for a semester. I looked on line
expecting to find a grainy clip or two but instead found a remarkable short
made, appropriately enough by one of India’s greatest film makers Satyajit Ray http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak_a1RJ2DZc
I was enthralled from the first hum of the shruti box. Wonderfully it is actually Ray who is
narrating the film as well. We were
talking yesterday about the fifth century in China and this film begins by
referencing the fourth century Indian treatise on the performing arts, the
Natya Shastra, attributed to the sage: Bharata.
As Ray explains early on the three syllables form the three essential
principle parts of the dance form: BHA -
Bhava, conveys the feeling and is conveyed through mime. RA: Raga is conveyed through music and TA:
Tala is conveyed through rhythm. It
struck me that the three parts each represents the expertise that the family
developed; Balasaraswati mastery of mime, and of course, dance, Raga was
Vishwanatan’s vocal and flute expertise and Tala was the mirdangam of their
brother Ranganathan.
When requested my daughter turned off her Chinese history
soap opera and joined for a few. “How
long is it?” Thirty minutes!? I don’t want to watch something in black and white.” Ahh well.
I made her watch a bit, a lovely dance of Krishna by the sea, and then
just relaxed and watched the rest myself.
Remarkably my former professor is in the film, looking much more than
the eight years younger that he would have been. His flute playing is sublime. Why haven’t I found or searched for more of
his music before?
I found a few other clips.
One of a contemporary Barat Natyam dancer performing in color. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgiLOzFQh14
Well. There we
go. Now my daughter would watch this. What a funny thing. I found the black and white, or indeed, muted
color in the Ray film completely inviting.
It must seem like Morse Code, or the fresco painting in a tomb, to my
daughter.
One thing that strikes you as you listen to this, when some
of the people interviewed speak is how remarkably articulate they are in, what
I presume to be their second language.
Check out minute 15:33 of the film where Dr. Narayana Menon speaks. Yes, I’m a sucker for an OxBridge accent I
suppose. But he imbues his message with
something so personal and plausible. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V._K._Narayana_Menon Ray himself, whose voice is throughout, is
also stately and rare.
Again, back to an earlier theme, but there is no tradition
of oratory in China. At times, such as when
I hear someone like this gentleman speak, it strikes me that I’ve rarely if
ever heard a Chinese person for whom English is a second language speak so
beautifully. That’s a strong statement,
and I’m thinking about that. English is
my first language, and, of course, I don’t speak that beautifully either. But listening it does feel quite different
from what I’d ever expect to hear articulated from anywhere in North Asia.
Digging around I found a clip of Bala and Vishwa’s brother
T. Ranganathan who also taught at Wesleyan, performing a Mirdangam solo from even
earlier, in 1969. (hey, look, its in
color) He looks really young. So confident.
Remarkable. I’m shaking my head and making odd facial gestures as if I’m
listening to Hendrix solo. I who have trouble keeping 3 / 4 time, recall that
mirdangam players are able to keep times like 63 / 64. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSVLkQS2xDs How lucky to have been exposed, to all this, despite
all my naiveté and ignorance, at a young but fortunately, not too young, age.
I’ve been IM-ing with a friend in the San Francisco this
morning. He asked me to send him some
rain. Regular readers please queue the
guffaws, now. ITS JANUARY 16 AND IT
STILL HASN”T SNOWED ONCE IN BEIJING. He
says the Bay is having the driest winter on record. No snow in the Sierras. Seventy days without rain. Sounds rather familiar. But then their air doesn’t smell like coal
dust when the fog rolls in. We’re in no
position to 雪中送炭[1], unless we take that literally.
[1] xuězhōngsòngtàn: lit.
to send coal during snow (idiom); fig. timely help / to provide help when one
most needs it
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