Never mind Bharatanatyam, contemporary seems the way to go in dance now. Why not? The obvious reason: The audience will like it. The philosophical reason: I create, therefore I am. Why repeat the same adavus you have been learning all your life in class? The specific reason: Nobody will count whether you're doing 8 or 16 dhi-dhi-tai, or whether your tirmanam is 1-2-1 or 3-2-1-0, but if you simply walk across the stage, people will understand what you're doing. The petty reason: In contemporary dance, you won't have your teacher reminding you to give a big smile even when you know damn well you are not enjoying the dance.

Seriously, if you do dance only thinking of it as a form of puja or whatever, fine. However, if you think of dance as a form of expression, surely there can be other possibilities of communicating with the audience in this 21st century, beyond the navarasa and the 50 or 60 mudras. That doesn't mean you have to deny your cultural traditions completely and start from nothing. The old Chandralekha is one good example, she would incorporate yoga movements into dance, or she would assimilate traditional movements differently to express something like a lotus flower in a more abstract manner. One of her former dancers, Padmini Chettur, performed in Singapore some time back, where she did quite a bit of slow movements like yoga, but also something kind of like a tat-thi-mu-tu, with a similar sense of rhythmic precision like Bharatanatyam, though the physical forms were entirely different. I must say, however, that Bharatanatyam is probably not as easy to lend itself to a new language of modern dance as, say, Kathak. UK-based Akram Khan (of Bangladeshi parentage) has made quite a name for himself doing such fusion stuff using Kathak. It's like he would do turns of the wrist (like dram-the) and sweeping of the arms (like the-tha-the) from possible positions in all possible directions, even with the body in low positions close to the floor. One or two years ago, he was invited to stage a world premiere of a show at the Singapore Arts Festival, his dance company was paid lots of money and he was staying in a 6-star hotel, and the show had quite a bit of that. A documentary of this performance called Ma was shown on television just the other day. He was also doing something like standing like a Kathak dancer but saying rhythmic syllables with mridangam as accompaniment, going ta-ke-dhi-mi ta-ke-je-nu and so on, mixing conventions of north and south. Of course to the western or non-Indian audience it would not make any difference. But it does raise some questions as to how traditional elements are being used in this context. Is it rebelling against traditions without a cause? Or with the cello being predominant in the music of the performance, do those confused snatches of traditional music serve to reflect a feeling of alienation for an emigrant? Or is there simply no need to justify any experiment in this postmodern age?

For me, the main problem if you want to do 'contemporary Indian dance' is the choice of music. If you use something like western piano or string music, does it mean you have to abandon the rhythmic style of Indian dance? Or if you take a techno remix of a kriti, will it end up nothing more than Bharatanatyam with disco lights? Maybe the problem is there is not enough good 'contemporary Indian music' available, so you may have to make do with whatever fusion music available.