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Features Friday Review
The forgotten Pavlova of Punjab
VEEJAY SAI
Tara Chaudhri was one of those pioneering dancers who went
unsung.
Praised by the likes of poet Vallathol and legendary ballerina
Maya Plisetskaya, Bharatanatyam dancer Tara Chaudhri is long
forgottennow, writes Veejay Sai.
Among Indias first generation dancers of the 20 century, whose
names registered globally, one can easily recallUday Shankar, Ram
Gopal and Shanta Rao. They belonged to the league of those who
dared to not just experiment
but also eventually came to define what the world was to
comprehend of Indian classical dance. While historyremembers them,
a few others eventually faded from public memory. One such name is
Tara Chaudhri.
According to Ram Gopals autobiography, Tara hailed from a Muslim
family in Punjab and came to South India in
1943. Beyond this little detail in the book which was rwritten
long after they had split, Ram Gopal doesnt mentionher. Before
1943, Tara and her sister Rani took training in Kathak from Pt.
Pyare Lal of the lesser-known PunjabGharana, in Lahore and further
trained in Manipuri.
Tara continued her training under Ustad Aashiq Hussain Khan.
However, an old pamphlet from 1942 announcesthat she ran a dance
school and taught Bharata Natya in Lahore, the cultural capital of
North India beforeIndependence. The mystery remains whether she
learnt the dance form prior to visiting the South in 1943. In
whichcase, it would make her one of the pioneers of Bharatanatyam
in the north.
Bharata Natya was also a generic term used for Indian dance in
that era. In 1943, Tara moved to Bangalore alongwith her brother
A.R. Chaudhri, himself an established scholar and a critic, and
became Ram Gopals principaldance partner. It might have been during
those years that she also frequented Kerala Kalamandalam to train
inKathakali. The doyen Govindan Kutty briefly mentions dancing with
her in his autobiography.
In 1946, Ram Gopal and Tara did an extensive tour of India and
Ceylon. Their fame spread so far that the magazineFilm India(now
defunct) edited by the notorious Baburao Patel from Bombay, that
only covered cinema, carried animpressive feature on their tour in
the December 1946 issue. Later, other dancers such as Leela
Bhaskarayya andShevanti joined Ram Gopals company in Bangalore.
For a few years, Tara made Madras her home and learnt
Bharatanatyam under the grand old nattuvanarMeenakshisundaram
Pillai. While in Madras, Tara ran a school and even danced in two
Tamil movies. In AVMsVedhala Ulagam in 1948, she danced to the
choreography of Vazhuvoor Ramaiah Pillai. In Paarijatham,
directed
by K.S. Gopalakrishnan in 1950, Tara was seen in the dance
sequences. In both the films, she shared the screen withthe famous
Travancore sisters, Padmini and Ragini.
Tara continued her performance life actively, travelling and
teaching. A review written in The Straits Times on July17, 1949,
reads: Tara Chaudhri is, perhaps, even greater than Russias Anna
Pavlova. Her sense of time and rhythmis perfect and her wonderful
mastery of the various styles of Indian dancing puts her in a class
by herself; So
orgotten Pavlova of Punjab - The Hindu
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observed the poet Vallathol. Taras earlier training in Kathakali
at Kalamandalam could justify why the great poetseemed highly
impressed with her.
The Indian Cultural Delegation of musicians and dancers
sponsored by the Government of India who visited andperformed in
the erstwhile USSR, Poland, and Czechoslovakia in 1954, included
Pt. Ravi Shankar and Pt. KishanMaharaj among musicians, and Guru
Gopinath and Tara Chaudhri among dancers. In a rare footage, one
sees Taragetting off the flight and being welcomed with a leaping
embrace from Maya Plisetskaya, one of 20 centurys greatest
ballerinas.
The 1959 special issue of Margthat covered Kathak claims Tara
ran a dance school in Ceylon for sometime.
Veteran Kathak diva Maya Rao from Bangalore remembers Taras
dance, She was a wonderful dancer and abeautiful looker. She was
Ram Gopals principal dance partner till she broke off to form her
own company. Thisangered him endlessly. I met her in Ceylon in
1961. That was the last I remember of her. Seetaram, the owner of
thefamous Vandyke Studios in old Bangalore, was a great fan and her
dance image that he shot was on permanentdisplay in his shop.
As times changed, neither the studio nor Seetaram exists and
with that Taras images vanished forever. An image ofRam Gopal and
Tara makes for the jacket of the now out-of-print book Tandava
Lakshanam, published in 1971.Neither the publishers nor the editors
credit the names of the dancers. That was the last the world heard
of Tara.
She completely vanished from public memory in the last four
decades. Her dream for a dance university in Indiaremains
unfulfilled. Nothing is known of her migration and settling down in
Pakistan. She continued teaching thereas well. She passed away, an
anonymous death, last September in Karachi where she spent the last
years of her life.
The news of her demise reached everyone much later.In a life
that witnessed fame, fortune, success and strife, Taras is a story
waiting to be grabbed by the silver screen.
What remains of Tara are a few scattered images and vague
anecdotes told by her contemporaries, based on theirageing
memories. Having worked among some of Indias greatest names in the
world of arts, Taras legacy is lost innegligent documentation and
lack of archiving. For now, she remains a shining star on the
far-stretched horizons ofIndian classical dance history.
Keywords: Bharatanatyam dancer Tara Chaudhri
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orgotten Pavlova of Punjab - The Hindu
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