Shyamala Mohanraj: Her Art & Values

NC Srinivasaraghavan

The year 2022 marks the 80 th birth anniversary of the late Bharatanatyam dancer and guru Shyamala Mohanraj. A senior disciple of T Balasaraswati (Bala), Shyamala lived a life dedicated to art. Born in 1941 at Jaffna, Sri Lanka, Shyamala was introduced to dance at the age of four by her father Nadaraja.

Her first guru was Subbiah Pillai. Her father once saw a performance of T Balasaraswati and decided that his daughter would learn only from her. Arriving in Madras as a teenager of fifteen, her tutelage under Balasaraswati began.

Shyamala always described Balasaraswati as a firm but encouraging teacher. The initial lessons with Bala were a daily affair and continued until her passing in 1984. She received lessons in Nritta from K Ganesan, son of Balasaraswati’s guru Kandappa Pillai. Shyamala also learnt Kathakali from the renowned Kathakali dancer Guru Gopinath alias Perumanoor Gopinathan Pillai.

Shyamala with her student Vasugi Singh. Photograph taken for Vasugi’s arangetram in 1975 Picture Courtesy – Vasugi Singh

Although Shyamala started learning from Balasaraswati in the mid 1950s, she performed her Arangetram in the year 1978 when she was thirty-six years old. She performed at an auditorium in Kanchipuram, and the event was preceded by special prayers at the Ammanakshi Amman temple, the very site of Bala’s own debut as a seven-year-old in 1925. Located close to the Kamakshi Amman temple in Kanchipuram, the Ammanakshi Amman temple was considered important by several hereditary dancing families. Oral histories recount that families once resided in the vicinity of this shrine.

Karen Elliott, a student of Balasaraswati, attended Shyamala's Arangetram. “I still remember the day when we went down to Kanchipuram with Balasaraswati and her daughter Lakshmi to watch the performance. After seeing the performance, Balamma was flying with happiness. A conversation followed in the car and Balamma announced that she intended to do everything within her means to support Shyamala’s dancing career” said Karen, who even wrote in her diary that Shyamala’s performance “was perfect and life-changing!”

Shyamala wished to be a doctor. However, on her father’s insistence she prioritized dance alongside her studies. Having completed her Masters in Science, she worked as a biology teacher at at a school in Chennai, while also practising, teaching and performing Bharatanatyam. During the 1970’s and 80’s, Shyamala taught dance to students at Balasaraswati’s Classical Bharata Natya School at the Madras Music Academy. Her colleagues were Nandini Ramani and Thirupampuram K Ramiah.

Continuing Bala’s legacy

Bala’s grandson Aniruddha Knight owes his solid grounding in the bani to Shyamala’s service to the art form. He poignantly recalls how his mother and guru Lakshmi Knight had instructed him on her death bed to unfailingly continue his dance lessons from Shyamala.

Being the first male dancer, and the first biracial member of an artistic family of eight matriarchs, Aniruddha finds himself in a unique position. His family's art is his inheritance, and he stresses that gender has never been a barrier for accessing it. Across the ages, the performance of Bharatanatyam has witnessed a focus on rigid gender binaries. It has not been easy for Aniruddha to make his mark as a male dancer since he never changed the style of his ancestors.

Today, Aniruddha teaches the challenging bani to several eager students. He says that his teaching style is influenced by Shyamala. She was a firm but patient teacher, one who always corrected mistakes with a smile on her face. He says, “Shyamala usually never allowed taking notes or recording classes. One had to learn through repetition and refinement. Shyamala

learnt from Bala through absorption as well – she watched other students dance and imbibedthe lessons. Her nritta was exceptional!”.

Diverse students

Leading a modest but culturally rich life, Shyamala took private Bharatanatyam lessons to several students who thronged her residence in Thiruvanmiyur, a residential neighbourhood in south Chennai. Apart from Chennai-based students, many Westerners learnt dance from Shyamala, and she generously shared her art with anyone who recognised its worth. Multitasking between her day job and dance classes, Shyamala was a single mother. She raised her son Pranavan, who grew up to become a pilot. Her greatest source of strength was her mother, Eswari, who mostly lived with her.

Freedom in the Bala Bani

Neela Bhaskar, one of Shyamala’s senior disciples, learnt from her for more than 15 years. Busting the myth that traditional Banis produce artistes who are all similar, Neela compared how even a Padam like Nithiraiyil Soppanathil had distinct flavours when performed by Shyamala and others like Lakshmi. “Shyamala would approach the piece with a girlish innocence and would express the mood of a heroine who was sad that the hero (often God) played cruel jokes on her. Lakshmi Knight would perform the piece with more despondence; Lakshmi also accentuated the emotional quotient by masterfully tweaking the bhava of the music as she sang while performing! The outcome of the abhinaya was an act of manodharma. Of course, both the artistes are incomparable in their respective portrayals.”

Ranjini Menon, who took dance lessons from Shyamala at the Music Academy also feels the same. She says, “In our style, we maintain our unique soul and personality on stage. The ani gave us all a solid foundation when it comes to technique but never made us lose ourselves in the process”.

Shyamala would often say that Bala’s music was unparalleled and was integral to the upkeep of the tradition. She regularly demonstrated the closeness of the music with the dance and asked her students to learn music so that they could better appreciate what was taught. Neela fulfilled Shyamala’s desire by learning music from T R Murthy, a flautist and student of T Viswanathan.

Shyamala expressed her faith and devotion through Bharatanatyam. Like her guru Balasaraswati, she was particularly attached to the worship of Lord Nataraja of Chidambaram. An event Shyamala held tremendously close to her heart was her dance offering before Nataraja atop the raised platform that houses the sanctum at Chidambaram.

It was very significant and an emotionally charged moment in her life. Her performance thatday included Enneramum Undhan Sannidhiyil and Vazhi Maraithirukkudhe from GopalakrishnaBharati’s Nandanar Charitram.

Karen Elliott who observed Shyamala performing across decades felt that the innate bhava in Shyamala’s presentations saturated with age. She says, “For Shyamala, this art was extremely sacred. The fluidity and the complexity with which her hands moved while performing Enneramum was amazing. When performing the line ‘thennam cholai thazhaikkum’, she would indicate the vast coconut groves and would elegantly switch to taking the coconut and breaking it open, pouring the contents as an offering to God. At that moment, she would harmoniously fill the music and rhythm with shapes making it a fulfilling visual and aural experience”.

As years progressed, Shyamala became more inward-oriented and spiritually advanced in her approach to dance. After a certain point of time, she started declining many performance opportunities and worked towards spiritual fulfilment through dance.

Shyamala during a performance Picture Courtesy – Conrad Olivier

Her approach to Bharatanatyam

Shyamala was a firm believer in the temple origins of Bharatanatyam. She was intensely respectful of the hereditary community of dancers and never failed to acknowledge their contributions to dance. She admired the aesthetic appeal and the rustic sophistication in traditional banis. She named her student Laurissa Vibhuti’s dance school in Colorado as ‘Koothambalam School of Devadasi Sadir’. Koothambalam here represents temple and Sadir refers to the dance form practiced by hereditary women performers.

In an interview to the school, Shyamala can be heard talking about the rampant commodification of dance. She felt that Bharatanatyam as an art form was increasingly becoming commercialized and that divinity in dance was being substituted by entertainment. Shyamala also expressed that today the talent of a dancer is judged by her physical appearance rather than her performance capabilities. She once said, “It is not external beauty that matters, but it is all about the beauty within. The stage is a place associated with enlightenment and transformation.”

When asked how she would define a great dancer, she said, “A good dancer is someone whose footwork, expression, hand movements and overall technique are perfect. But a great dancer is someone who has the ability to transform into the character she is portraying. The effectiveness of the bhava depends on how much the dancer enjoys her own dance! You don’t dance for others but you dance for yourself. When I dance, I do not think of myself as an old lady. I try to become a Gopika who plays with Krishna or a pining heroine waiting for Shiva.”

Shyamala was enormously devoted to her guru Balasaraswati and would often recount incidents and anecdotes about Bala to her students. She spoke of Bala often and expressed her gratitude to her guru at each and every occasion. Her son mentioned that Bala’s death in 1984 affected her more than the death and displacement of her close relatives in Sri Lanka during the Anti-Tamil pogroms that took place in the 1980s.

Next page: Shyamala Mohanraj during a performance in Spaces, Madras Picture Courtesy – Colette de Gargnier-Rettner

Shyamala, like Bala, was hesitant to teach dance to students outside the Bala tradition. She believed that students needed to stick to a particular Bani in its entirety for their art to shine in true splendor.

Shyamala passed away on July 14 th , 2015, at the age of seventy-four due to ill health. Her art lives on through her students who continue to perform and teach the Bala bani. Despite her talent, recognition and opportunities came quite late in life for Shyamala. She never chose to dilute the quality of her art for fame and accolades. She has a solid set of values and principles which she passed on to her students.

Many of her students are of the opinion that the art world did not fully tap into her potential due to a multitude of reasons. A sense of sadness also prevails among some students as they feel Shyamala remained unappreciated in her younger days because she was not endowed with the social capital and financial strength that many of her contemporaries possessed. Shyamala’s entire life was centred around art, and it is no exaggeration to state that she acted as an influential bridge between Balasaraswati and the next generation of learners who are now tasked with the responsibility of taking forward Bala’s legacy.

The full version of this article can be found in Vaak’s website

About the author

Srinivasaraghavan is an avid rasika of classical music and dance. A finance professional byoccupation, he writes articles on art and culture for The Hindu and other newspapers andjournals. He is also a Vainika.