Art through Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s eyes

Kunal Ray

MAY 17, 2018 15:38 IST

Filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan

The celebrated filmmaker says the audience watching his films on dance should feel that they are watching a performance on stage

Films can play a significant role in understanding a dance tradition. Every dancer (or perhaps the better ones) is a living archive. They are custodians and repositories of a certain training, legacy, aesthetics and performance tradition. This came through clearly at the recently held festival of films on Indian classical and contemporary dance titled ‘Punaravalokan’ (looking back) held at Mahagami Gurukul in Aurangabad.

Think about Satyajit Ray’s Bala (1976) for instance, which isn’t a great film so to speak but nevertheless documents an important moment in Indian dance history. All the admirers of Kelucharan Mohapatra eventually turn to Kumar Shahani’s Bhavantarana (1991) to be captivated by the maestro’s matchless grace. Film therefore is a museum too. This observation was further corroborated by noted filmmaker and Dadasaheb Phalke award winner, Adoor Gopalakrishnan who was the chief guest at Punaravalokan and also participated in a conversation with the audience after the screening of two of his films at the festival, Kalamandalam Gopi (1999) and Dance of the Enchantress (2007).

Kalamandalam Gopi features legendary Kathakali maestro, Gopi, who was trained at the Kerala Kalamandalam. The film documents all the elements of Kathakali including make-up, costume, music and vividly portrays the training process an aspirant has to undergo. In a much later film, Dance of the Enchantress , Adoor showcases the evolution of Mohiniyattom through parallel stories of a teacher and her pupil. Both films also include some captivating performance footage shot at various locations across Kerala. These films not only serve as an exposition for the uninitiated but also play a major role in archiving dance heritage and some of its foremost practitioners.

In the conversation that followed the film screening, Adoor revealed his affinity for Kathakali. He said, “I started watching Kathakali from my mother’s lap. As a child, I used to be interested in the make-up of the artistes because each type denoted a specific character. Besides, there was drumming and singing. I gradually began to appreciate the importance of lyrics. My mother would explain the stories before the performance because you will not understand the recital without knowing the story.”

However, in his youth, Adoor was drawn to modern theatre. He rediscovered Kathakali much later. He informs, “There was a long gap in between. I slowly went back to follow Kathakali. The first such documentary I made was on a famous guru, Chenganoor Raman Pillai. He was almost 92 when I shot the film. Years later, I made this film on Gopi which captures him at his peak. I also made another film on Guru Ramankutty Nair who was Gopi’s guru. In this process, I realised why Kathakali ought to have been discovered in Kerala and not any other place.

Film on Krishnanattam

Adoor Gopalakrishnan also made a film on Krishnanattam, the precursor to Kathakali. He explains, “Both Krishnanattam and Kathakali have their origins in Koodiyattam which is being performed for the past 2000 years. It is the oldest living theatre in the world. You can sit anywhere in a Koothambalam (temple theatre) and hear the performers during a Koodiyattam performance. Kathakali is more accessible than Koodiyattam. There are a few in Kerala who have seen the full act of a play in Koodiyattam which usually takes between 15-45 days to perform. It survived because it was confined to the Chakyar community in Kerala, who were the custodians of this art form.”

Adoor often says when a Koodiyattam performance begins, everything around it ceases to exist. It was largely owing to the efforts of noted scholar Sudha Gopalakrishnan that Koodiyattam was recognised by the UNESCO as “Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity”. Adoor’s three-hour long documentary on Koodiyattam had the UNESCO team enthralled. He adds, “Koodiyattam artistes were extremely demoralised because there were few opportunities to perform and almost no audience. Kathakali on the contrary witnessed a steady ascent. Kathakali artistes were travelling all over the world and being handsomely paid. UNESCO sent a member of their team to Trivandrum to see my film. After the recognition, things are much better now. Money has been granted to the performers and several revival efforts are already underway. I feel gratified.”

The revered filmmaker insists that the audience watching his films should feel that they are watching a performance on stage. He is not a fan of abstraction in art-based documentaries. Adoor feels that dance films must convey every bit of aesthetics of the form which has also been a perennial quest in these films. His preparation for such projects is also meticulous. The Mohiniyattom documentary took around seven years to make. Adoor read every possible book available on the dance form and also saw some of the earlier films made on the subject. He chose to eschew background commentary and interviews. The focus remained on dance as it should because that perhaps is the origin of all dialogue.

Kunal Ray teaches literary and cultural studies at FLAME University, Pune and regularly writes on art and culture.

Review | Vaikhari Film |Asian Age by Leela Venkataraman

 

Bhagat Singh to Buddha: Dance, theatre mix in out-of-the-box presentations

THE ASIAN AGE. | LEELA VENKATARAMAN

Published : Apr 1, 2019, 

At the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) was an unusual film on “Vaikhari” produced by Lubdhak Chatterjee, sponsored by Public Service Broadcasting Trust (PSBT). An engineering graduate, Lubdhak attempts looking at “parhant” or the articulation of mnemonics in dance through imagery visually caught on the camera, the film seeking to look at the nature of pure sound and how it connects with form in dance, art and in life. The pattern of sound arrangements in rhythmic phrase and their utterance can suggest a “bindu”, a “rekha” and an “akaar” (dot, line and shape) all attributes of form! In a scene showing Kalidasa’s Meghadootam, sounds like “Ghe ghe tita” suggest the dark clouds which the Yaksha separated from his beloved — and the messenger carrying his words of love to his beloved. Inanimate sound through its patterning and “chhand” becomes an abstract symbol suggesting form. The spacing of the “bols”, the silences, can all convey phrases of movement. The bols in a “bandish” can suggest chirping birds, rain of varying intensity (drizzling or pouring) and many other things. Through the utterance of certain sounds arranged to create a certain effect, in a purvaranga invocation, a canvas is created which the dancer later fills through her dance. Shot almost completely in the variety and beauty of the Mahagami dance institution premises, one sees director Parwati Dutta speaking to her students and directing them on sounds translating to movement, with references to texts. With sounds filling up space, filmed sculptural exuberance of temple architecture acquires a special vibrancy. Sound vocabulary in dance has been inspired not just by percussion mnemonics, but also by nature and its inhabitants. In a brief guest appearance, Pandit Birju Maharaj explains how tonal inflections and every little turn and shift in the syllabic punctuation of a rhythmic composition suggests movement inflections. Parwati mentions Nirgeet, a thousand year parampara, and following her Kathak references also gives examples from the other form she practices — viz Odissi and points to the Vadya Pallavi based on mardal mnemonics, on which she worked with the late Banamali Maharana. A very interesting visualisation of how what is called nonsense syllables finds expression through movement and form.

VAIKHARI

March 26, 2019
By Shrinjita



If one is seeking to learn about rhythm through a film, Vaikhari by Lubdhak Chatterjee brings justice to that search. The 59-minute documentary paves its journey exploring and expressing the art of Padhant, a bol, which deals with the recitation of mnemonic and rhythmic syllables in Hindustani classical forms of music and of dance like Kathak. “The protagonist of the film is sound- bol Padhant. An intricate network of sonorous elements have been used to initiate an experience of the musical (rhythmic) form”, says Chatterjee. To define the spatiotemporal structures in performance, along with bodily movements and beats of percussive instruments, dancers and musicians recite the Padhant bol.



With the life-like participation of the camera, the film puts sound within a spatial perspective. It follows the trails of preparation of Kalidasa’s lyric poem Meghdootam (4th-5th century CE) by Kathak exponent, Parwati Dutta at the Mahagami Gurukul, Aurangabad. Reciting lines from the poem, Dutta derives specific movements by translating the text into hand gestures and mudras (symbols), used in Kathak. The course of making music on the Tabla, Pakhawaj and Sarangi build up to one of the most interesting sequences in the film. Dutta, along with her team of musicians, processes each word from her recitation of Meghdootam and explores rhythm on individual instruments. The rhythmic translation by each musician lies synchronous to the literal meaning of the part recited by Dutta. There is a certain sense of spatial echoing of time as the shots from inside the Gurukul break into the surrounding landscape, creating poetry between time, rhythm and space. In the film, one finds her preparing choreographies with her team of dancers in one of the caves- a probable nat-mandap of Ellora. Drawing from the ancient and most-celebrated Indian text on performance, the Natyashashtra, the sequence at Ellora reflects on the aesthetic principles of classical performances. Shot in the interiors of the cave, Dutta explains the principles of Purvaranga, the procedure and rituals one has to follow before a performance. This sudden divergence of space, from the practice halls of the Gurukul to the ancient caves, allowed Chatterjee to give perspective to the Natyashashtra. The shots of the ancient sculptures depicting Tribhanga and other dance postures, along with a silhouette like shot of Dutta performing, evokes an ethos of an erstwhile era.



The creation of rhythm based on the text of Meghdootam is complemented by shots of the Gurukul’s nooks, walls, practice halls, and of the incoming monsoon: clouds, rain, fauna and moist earth. The tripartite conversation between images, rhythm and poetry, evoke a certain sense of timelessness throughout the linear structure of the film. Chatterjee mentions that his documentary follows the same narrative structure as Meghdootam. The Sanskrit classic, translated in 1813 to English by Horace Hayman Wilson and titled ‘The Cloud Messenger’, depicts a northward journey to the Himalayas from Central India, as described by a Yaksha (nature-spirit) to a passing cloud. The exiled subject of King Kuber (God of Wealth), wants the cloud to carry within itself a message for his wife, waiting on Mount Kailasa. The 111 stanzas’ lyric poetry introduces its theme in the very beginning, keeping a simple linear narrative; the two parts of the literary work are Purvamegha (Previous cloud) and Uttaramegha (Consequent cloud). The film follows this literal division of the poem, the two segments, and establishes its protagonist and subject- sound in the very beginning of the film. The rest that follows, delves into the process of creating the rhythm of bol Padhant.



While the film is informative and explains various terms dealing with the art of rhythmic utterances, the form of the film is analogical to the traditional tropes of documentary film making, where it omits voice-overs, interviews and the use of archival material. A performance when documented, fails in containing its integral component, the ‘living experience’. Vaikhari, which in Sanskrit means articulation, conveys a ‘lived experience’ of the process of creating bol Padhant, through the film’s aesthetic collaboration between myth, rhythm, history, and speech. Unfolding an incoming monsoon, synchronous to the linear narrative of Meghdootam, the ephemeral subject of the film- sound, overcomes its complex ahistorical or timeless form and manifests itself as a physical entity in the film’s timeline.

Lubdhak Chatterjee has a degree in engineering from Delhi, but his heart belongs to the arts. A connoisseur of Indian classical dance and music, Chatterjee carried out year-round intensive research on rhythms, bols and recitations in Hindustani classical dance and music, especially the practices at the Gurukul, and made his first documentary Vaikhari, produced by the Public Service Broadcasting Trust. A self-taught and motivated filmmaker, he debuted with the film In a Free State, screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 2016. Lubdhak draws from veteran filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s works for this documentary. “I would like to thank legendary filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan for his framing-while-shooting performances in his films like Kalamandalam Gopi, and Dance of the Enchantress in regards to audience appreciation”, says Chatterjee.

Cover Image: Guru Parwati Dutta at the Ellora caves.

Trailer: Vaikhari | PSBT |

Vaikhari is a film, produced by Public Service Broadcasting Trust (PSBT) and directed by Lubdhak Chatterjee under the guidance of Guru Parwati Dutta. Vaikhari, which in sanskrit means intelligent and articulate utterances, primarily focusses on "padhant" which is the art of recitation of mnemonic syllables used in Hindusthani Classical Music and Dance. The film incorporates different artistic streams in allusion to padhant thereby aiming at a profound aesthetic experience of rhythmic utterances in its multiple manifestations.

Vaikhari review: Exploring the unintelligible, but artistic language of Padhant

SUPARNA THOMBARE
Mumbai, 18 Sep 2018

Director Lubdhak Chatterjee delves into the art of recitation with renowned Kathak exponent Parwati Dutta.The film opens with the definition of various terms used commonly in music and dance like taal (rhythm that's evenly paced), lay (flow of duration) and bol (meaningful or abstract words), among others. And in the end is one that, perhaps, combines them all — Padhant — the central theme of the film.

Recited by dancers and musicians during a performance to mark space, time, motion and direction through words, hand movements or the beat of the percussive instrument, Padhant is the art of reciting rhythmic syllables in Hindustani classical music and dance forms such as Kathak.

Director Lubdhak Chatterjee delves into this art of recitation with the help of renowned Kathak exponent Parwati Dutta. He sets the film in Dutta’s beautiful Mahagami Gurukul in Aurangabad. The setting — with sculptures, paintings, plants and aesthetic stone walls — provides a beautiful backdrop for a film whose core is performing art.

The film follows Dutta and her students as they prepare to stage a dance adaptation of Kalidas’s masterpiece Meghadootam.
Leisurely shots of the various nooks and corners of the gurukul take up most of the initial 15 minutes, setting up the stage for exploration of the subject. The cinematography is intimate, with some beautiful compositions and elegant camera movements that complement the dance its capturing.

While most of action unfolds indoors, a brief break comes in the form of Ellora caves, where Dutta and her group of dancers reconnect with the history of Padhant. Watch out for a solo performance by Dutta against the backdrop of the sculptures, with a beautiful play of sunlight and shadows.

While Chatterjee attempts to educate the lay person via this documentary, the viewer may be thrown directly into the deep end when it comes to comprehending the scope of the subject. It may be a little difficult to understand, with lots of Sanskrit and technical words thrown in. But you will definitely come out learning a lot more about the incomprehensible, but magical sounds and syllables, that form an important element in the expression of the emotions being conveyed in a dance performance.

Vaikhari, according to Hindu and yogic philosophy, is the last of four stages that sounds go through as they come to be perceptible and audible. Simply put, it stands for articulation or expression.

Chatterjee becomes a silent spectator and allows this artistic form to unfold in front of him. The director refrains from using voiceovers and interviews, which are the typical tropes of documentary filmmaking and opts to tell the story through Dutta's interactions with her students and colleagues, and the footage of rehearsals and dance performances.

This treatment makes Vaikhari an aesthetically pleasing film delving into things that may be incomprehensible on the surface, but have a magical and artistic language of expression within.

Bhagat Singh to Buddha: Dance, theatre mix in out-of-the-box presentations

THE ASIAN AGE. | LEELA VENKATARAMAN
Published : Apr 1, 2019
At the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) was an unusual film on “Vaikhari” produced by Lubdhak Chatterjee, sponsored by Public Service Broadcasting Trust (PSBT). An engineering graduate, Lubdhak attempts looking at “parhant” or the articulation of mnemonics in dance through imagery visually caught on the camera, the film seeking to look at the nature of pure sound and how it connects with form in dance, art and in life. The pattern of sound arrangements in rhythmic phrase and their utterance can suggest a “bindu”, a “rekha” and an “akaar” (dot, line and shape) all attributes of form! In a scene showing Kalidasa’s Meghadootam, sounds like “Ghe ghe tita” suggest the dark clouds which the Yaksha separated from his beloved — and the messenger carrying his words of love to his beloved. Inanimate sound through its patterning and “chhand” becomes an abstract symbol suggesting form. The spacing of the “bols”, the silences, can all convey phrases of movement. The bols in a “bandish” can suggest chirping birds, rain of varying intensity (drizzling or pouring) and many other things. Through the utterance of certain sounds arranged to create a certain effect, in a purvaranga invocation, a canvas is created which the dancer later fills through her dance. Shot almost completely in the variety and beauty of the Mahagami dance institution premises, one sees director Parwati Dutta speaking to her students and directing them on sounds translating to movement, with references to texts. 

 

With sounds filling up space, filmed sculptural exuberance of temple architecture acquires a special vibrancy. Sound vocabulary in dance has been inspired not just by percussion mnemonics, but also by nature and its inhabitants. In a brief guest appearance, Pandit Birju Maharaj explains how tonal inflections and every little turn and shift in the syllabic punctuation of a rhythmic composition suggests movement inflections. Parwati mentions Nirgeet, a thousand year parampara, and following her Kathak references also gives examples from the other form she practices — viz Odissi and points to the Vadya Pallavi based on mardal mnemonics, on which she worked with the late Banamali Maharana. A very interesting visualisation of how what is called nonsense syllables finds expression through movement and form."

Want Vaikhari to trigger a new journey for people

: Lubdhak Chatterjee

Friday, 23 Nov, 2018

Cinestaan

Vaikhari, in Sanskrit means 'utterance of sounds or words that are complete consisting of full and intelligible sentences'. It primarily focuses on padhant, that is the art of recitation of mnemonic syllables used in Indian classical percussion and dance.

Lubdhak Chatterjee's film follows a dancer's journey as she choreographs for Meghdootam where we observe the stages of artistic contemplation with special emphasis on theoretical and practical aspects of padhant involved in conversion of the essence of literary stanzas into their rhythmic analogues - the whole process being in symphony with tabla, pakhawaj, sarangi players, as well as, a dhrupad singer.

Vaikhari will be screened today (23 November) at the 6th Woodpecker International Film Festival 2018, in Siri Fort Auditorium, New Delhi. The festival will be held from 23-25 November.


In conversation with us, the filmmaker discusses his engagement with the world of utterances and the journey that he wishes the audience to be initiated into. Excerpts.

In your film you explore various art forms - dance, music, calligraphy, and nature - and the ways in which all these are entwined. What was the thought process that led to this exploration in the film between various art forms?

I like the fact that you used the word 'entwined' because if we look at Indian art or the school of thought, most of the stuff is interlinked. My point of initiation was the keen interest I had taken in this art form about the utterances, which I used to experience in music concerts or dance concerts.which I had attended since childhood.

I was brought up in Calcutta in an environment where I was exposed to this. When I decided to make a film, I thought that this was a good subject for me to work on. It was an exploration for me... and one thing led to another. The first day when Parwati di [Parwati Dutta] started talking.there were layers upon layers that were revealed and not just utterances, and the film took a very different turn.there is something much more fundamental in these utterances or in the act of uttering the syllables which connects us to Indian thought or Indian philosophy.

So that's how the film began, and I must say that nature has always inspired me and confused me as well. As an only child of my parents, I had a lot of solitude.so nature always intrigued me and I wanted to include nature in this film because when I talk about rhythmic utterances, rhythm is an intrinsic element in nature. we talk about the diurnal nature of the sun, the seasons, the heartbeat.

The one thing which united the discrete parts [in the film] was Kalidas' Meghdootam, when I decided to have a narrative thread or a bridge running through the film. After a lot of contemplation and discussion we chose Meghdootam as the piece that helped me integrate all these discrete parts and it showed me the path in how to integrate all these elements - calligraphy or dance and music - to key elements in the film.

There's this beautiful sequence in the film where the dance performance takes place in the Ellora caves, which makes us imagine what performances might have been like in ancient times. How was that conceived?

As I mentioned, we had selected Meghdootam as the narrative thread. Initially, we had selected stanzas and I was following the text in a linear manner. I wanted to explore different stanzas in different ways. Some through calligraphy, some through music, others through dance.some through classroom discussions. We also decided that we will use some allusions to Natyashastra and the ancient texts which refers to the utterances.

Since we were shooting in Aurangabad, Ellora was very near, so we decided that we could go there and have certain sequences where Parwati didi is discussing the Natyashastra with her students. She was talking about Nirgeet, which is on utterances in the text and we felt that we could shoot that in the cave and temporize that whole idea because, as you said, it takes you back to the time when these art forms were practiced. It was keeping this thought in mind, of experiencing Nirgeet through a dance sequence.

Your film has been screened at the India Habitat Centre and at the Open Frame Film Festival and now it's at Woodpecker Film Festival. What are the kind of responses you have been receiving for your film. Many people, like me, would not have even thought about the art forms and utterances...

I want people to engage with the film because of its intrinsic material of the world of utterances. Basically, people have asked me lots of questions about my choices and I would love people to experience the fundamentals of the art forms and whatever we could portray.

As a documentary filmmaker I know that we are required to document things, but for me, music, being an art form, is also about experience, so I really want people to get engaged. The film was screened at SRFTI (Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute) and we had a Q and A which lasted for over an hour. There were different responses as there were people from different cultural backgrounds.

My idea is also to present the film at various music and dance academies. Engaging with them also opens up a lot of horizons for me. Last, but not the least, this film is not the end to the world of utterances because I only initiate you. It's a tiny introduction to this beautiful world and the film doesn't end with the credits. Like in a good concert, it stays with you and probably starts a new journey. So, I want the film to trigger a new journey for people because I feel that the full experience can happen in a concert. That's my idea that people can explore this subject in their own ways.

In the documentary ‘Vaikhari’, a poetic exploration of music’s language of rhythms

Aug 31, 2018
Archana Nathan

Lubdhak Chatterjee’s film, produced by Public Service Broadcasting Trust, delves into the art of Padhant.

Lubdhak Chatterjee’s documentary Vaikhari has much to offer to connoisseurs of classical music and dance. The Public Service Broadcasting Trust production is dedicated to Padhant, the art of reciting mnemonic and rhythmic syllables in Hindustani classical music and dance forms such as Kathak.

Padhant is recited by dancers and musicians during a performance to mark space and time through words, hand movements or the beat of the percussive instrument. A variation of Padhant in the Carnatic tradition is the Konnakkol.

Chatterjee, an engineer by training and a self-taught filmmaker, delves deep into this art of recitation with the help of renowned Kathak exponent Parwati Dutta. He sets the film in Dutta’s beautiful Mahagami Gurukul in Aurangabad, ensuring that the aurally rich subject gets a fitting visual treatment.

The 59-minute film follows Dutta and her students as they prepare to stage a dance adaptation of Kalidas’s Sanskrit masterpiece Meghadootam. Chatterjee silently observes as Dutta delineates the role of Padhant in depicting key parts of the text.

Vaikhari will be screened at the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute in Kolkata on September 5, followed by PSBT’s Open Frame festival in New Delhi on September 18 and the Pondicherry International Film Festival on September 30.

Chatterjee is not a trained musician or dancer but is a devotee of both art forms. In Vaikhari, these passions come together with his love for still photography and filmmaking, which he discovered while doing his post-graduation in engineering. His made his filmmaking debut with In A Free State, which was screened in the Cannes Film Festival’s short film section in 2016. Vaikhari, a Sanskrit word that means intelligence and articulation, is his second film and first documentary.

A lifelong exposure to classical music and dance drew Chatterjee to exploring Padhant. “I didn’t learn these forms but there were people in my family who practised it,” he said. “I also used to attend seminars and recitals. It was during one of these occasions that I first witnessed a performance of Padhant. At that point in time, it appeared as a language, a mode of communication to me. It intrigued me.”



The fascination for the form lingered when he went to Delhi for higher studies. He regularly attended classical music and dance recitals in the capital. A parallel fascination for filmmaking too began to develop. “Sometime during my Masters degree, the idea of making a film had begun to take root,” Chatterjee said. “And I felt that if I were to make a film, I should choose a topic that I’m confident about, at least. Even if I’m not a trained musician or a dancer, Padhant is something I have been familiar with and a connoisseur of.”

Chatterjee found that while Padhant is widely known in classical art circles, it was not familiar to those outside that world. “I thought it would make a good idea for a film,” he said. “And I felt that the research that I will have to do for the film will help me gain a deeper understanding of the form. And that’s what I feel has happened. A whole new world has opened up in front of me.”



Chatterjee had watched Parwati Dutta perform at a concert at Delhi’s India Habitat Centre in 2015, and he had also followed her work and her scholarship in Kathak. He felt that she was the ideal person to lead his exploration. “What really interested me is her keen interest in ancient traditions, in Dhrupad music and in different, old bandishes that are not performed generally,” Chatterjee said. “When I emailed her in 2015, she asked me to visit her school in Aurangabad. Once I went there and discussed the entire concept for the film with her, I felt that I have come to the right place.”

Chatterjee stayed in Dutta’s gurukul and began his research. Slowly, the film began to take shape. “The idea of including Kalidas’s Meghadootam emerged out of my discussions with Parwati di,” he said. “Although it is a non-fiction film, I was very particular about not using voice-overs and interviews, which are the stereotypical tools used in a documentary.”

In the documentary, Chatterjee allows the details to unfold by filming Dutta explaining Padhant to her students. Padhant’s complex history and its various manifestations are also revealed. “By utterances of bols, we can show the arrival of clouds,” Dutta says in the film, picking up an excerpt from Kalidas’s text. “Every alphabet or utterance is inspired or derived from nature after all. Like the phrase gheghethita alludes to the rumble of clouds. By expanding the phrase, one can show a scene of arrival of clouds.”

Chatterjee’s camera movements too seem to mimic the beat of the Padhant. “One can call it a dance of the camera or my response to the music, to the bols,” he said. “In indoor spaces, for instance, my camera tracks only in a horizontal axis keeping in mind a dancer’s body in response to gravitational force.”

Chatterjee also attempts to recreate the rhythms and sounds of the space around him. “A lot of this film is shaped by my experience of sitting in Mahagami and experiencing that space,” Chatterjee said. “Whether it is the sight and sound of dry leaves falling, of a downpour and lotuses blooming or of a dancer practising dance at a distance – all of it shaped how I eventually shot the film.”

Wouldn’t the concepts explained in Vaikhari be more accessible to those who are familiar with the basics of classical music and dance? Chatterjee disagrees.

“I feel it is very arrogant to think that people won’t get these concepts,” he said. “Most people in their real lives deal with issues and concepts that are quite complex. As for me, all I wanted to do is be honest to the subject. That’s the only way I felt I can provide a profound experience that I can share with others.”

Link : https://scroll.in/reel/891546/in-the-documentary-vaikhari-a-poetic-exploration-of-musics-language-of-rhythms