Book Review - From the Corner of Her Eye: The Many Histories of Bharatanatyam - Dr. Ragothaman Yennamalli

A week ago, I came to know that the Delhi-based dancer Justin McCarthy had penned a book on dance history titled From the Corner of Her Eye, published by Juggernaut. He is someone I have always considered a thinking dancer, one who puts a great deal of thought and energy into his choreography, technique, and the larger ethos of dance.

In 2008, I watched a performance by Lokesh Bharadwaj, choreographed by Justin McCarthy, in which Tyagaraja's kriti Endaro Mahanubhavulu was reimagined as a padavarnam and performed with remarkable finesse. The novelty, as one might assume, was not simply in using this particular composition as a padavarnam. Rather, it lay in the imaginative use of space, the structuring of korvais, and the integration of dance elements into a piece steeped in bhakti. So, I was pretty excited to know what's new being written in the book, and at the outset the book didn't disappoint me.

The premise of the book is that it has become increasingly difficult to separate fact from fiction in the widely circulated, and often reductive, histories of sadir or chinna melam and the subsequent reinvention of the form as Bharatanatyam. Over the last decade or so, multiple voices have pushed a largely binary view of Bharatanatyam: Rukmini Devi Arundale versus Balasaraswati, Sringara versus Bhakti, a hoary past versus a reinvented dance form, and so on. For some reason, reducing a complex history to such binaries seems to have become the norm rather than the exception. This book has attempted to bring such discussions with the needed nuance. 

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