Noted dancer Kanak Rele, who gave academic status to Mohiniyattam, dies

Born in Gujarat, Rele’s mother moved to Santineketan with the child, then five years old, after her husband’s death — Rele’s uncle, a painter, lived in Santiniketan, and it was here, amid art and aesthetics, that Rele developed interest in dance, especially the commanding Kathakali, the compelling classical art form native to Kerala and known for its elaborate costumes and repertoire that’s seeped in martial arts. Rele trained in the male-dominated art form since she was seven, under Guru Panchali Karunakara Panicker, besides getting rigorous training in Bharatanatyam.

But Bharatanatyam was not connecting with her being. Mohiniyattam, which Rele always watched in awe, was beckoning her, probably because of her training in Kathakali and Mohiniyattam’s connect with Kerala.

With roots in Natya Shastra, Mohiniyattam’s history is tied with Vishnu taking on a female avatar and presenting this erotic, delicate dance for good to win over evil.

Rele’s shift to Mohiniyattam was also significant because she began learning it at age 28, in 1965, after she was married and a few years after the long decade when Mohiniyattam was vilified as being a devadasi dance form, linked to prostitution and thus banned under the colonial rule (from 1931 to 1938). By 1940, the ban was partially lifted but the sociopolitical strife and much conversation and dissent around it led to a restored curiosity and interest in the art form.

Once Rele began with Mohiniyattam, she never looked back. She began learning under Kalamandalam Rajalakshmi, travelled to Kerala on a Sangeet Natak Akademi grant to study various Mohiniyattam dancers in the state. Rele’s own subsequent choreography focussed on making the mythology contemporary and presenting a more modern version of the centuries-old stories.

In her performances, the nayika was a strong character, not just a lovelorn woman, anguished and waiting for the nayaka. She also met renowned poet and dramatist Kavalam Narayana Panikkar, who asked her to discard the Carnatic mode and attempt using Sopaana Sangeetam, the music form that developed in temples of Kerala, with her dance.

But while Rele was dancing and performing and going through the rigour of learning the art form in the manner of oral legacy, she also decided to document and create an academic structure for Mohiniyattam. She created the Nalanda Dance Research Centre in 1966, and the Nalanda Nritya Kala Mahavidyalay in 1972.

Rele then worked towards getting Nalanda affiliated to the University of Mumbai. Thanks to the efforts, those learning Mohiniyattam can now have a formal degree in the art form.

According to noted Mohiniyattam exponent Bharati Shivaji, Rele resurrected Mohiniyattam by giving it a scholastic bent. “Being an outsider, someone who wasn’t from Kerala, it’s so important to understand Kanak Rele’s remarkable contribution to give Mohiniyattam an academic status. Second, at a time when female roles in Kathakali were not very well-known, she propagated them. And I am talking of times that were extremely challenging. One has to give it to her, in the way she worked for the dance form.”