Balasaraswati: Her Art and Life

2 ideas

1. Hereditary dancer amid the anti-nautch reform

   T. Balasaraswati (1918–1984), granddaughter of the veena player Veena Dhanammal, came from a hereditary family of musicians and dancers and debuted as a child in 1925, winning acclaim in India early on. As reformers campaigned against temple dancers, leading to the Madras Devadasi Act of 1947, and as Rukmini Devi Arundale reshaped the dance for an upper-caste, institutional setting, Balasaraswati kept performing the inherited repertoire. She later taught in the United States over repeated visits.

2. Erotic longing is the vehicle of devotion

   Balasaraswati argued that sringara, the portrayal of love and longing, was not a corruption to be cleaned out of the dance. In her view it was the very means by which human feeling is directed toward the divine. Removing or sanitizing it in the name of respectability does not purify the art. It empties the art of the emotional truth that made it spiritual.

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