The dancing life of Jayachandran Palazhy

The floor was lit. The dancers were practising their moves, body glistening under spotlights, torso drawing curves, limbs snaking and undulating. Fifty two-year-old Jayachandran Palazhy aka Jay was watching them as he put on his socks — an utterly insignificant move if not for the way he did it. Eyes on the dance floor, spine at ease, one leg firm on the ground, the other rose up to reach his hands. It would seem bizarre to believe that a mundane act, one he wasn’t even aware of performing, could describe the sensory experience of Attakkalari. Yet, the fluid grace with which Jay donned his socks underlined his mastery over his body. His hand pointed towards a corner; his eyes followed; in a flash, he seemed to fly across the room. A ripple that began in the curl of a finger went to his toe, and ended in me. Hypnotic, he flowed like synchronised poetry.
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Little Jay had it tough. His was a matriarchal family in Thrissur. Temple ponds, banyan trees, swings, his mother and friends dancing in graceful circles — dance came to him very early. There were frequent performances at the public spaces near home. Bharatanatyam, Kuchipudi and Mohiniyattam. He would watch them wide-eyed. But a boy, growing up in small town Kerala, he wasn’t expected to dance. Let alone take it up as a profession.

Perhaps it was Kathakali that tipped the scales for him.

Traditionally, Kathakali performances happen at night and end early morning. The dancers perform on a stage lit solely by the kalivilaku (a tall lamp), whose wick would flicker in the breeze and create dramatic shadows. Fierce colours, elaborate costumes, haunting music, rhythmic dancing, where the dancers, playing larger-than-life characters, used their eyes, face and hands to tell a tale. You watched it late into the night, sleep-deprived, semi-conscious, and that is when Kathakali becomes magical realism. It’s a heady concoction, totally addictive. Jay came back home, and spent hours imitating the moves in front of the mirror. He was hooked.

“But I had to wait to learn dance.”

The early years
After school, Jay won the national merit scholarship, and took up Physics in college. A class topper, he was into sports — athletics, badminton, cricket — and began Bharathanatyam lessons with well known guru Kalamandalam Kshemavathi. Soon he rebelled, missed a few exams, and lost his scholarship. “I was more interested in dance, cinema and drama. But I completed graduation, and left for Chennai.” He was looking for a guru. “I didn’t know anyone in the city. My teacher Kshemavathi had mentioned a few names, and I wandered around trying to find them.” He finally came to Dhananjayan. “Dhananjayan master was the perfect role model of a male dancer. I was lucky to have learnt under him.”

Besides Bharathanatyam, Jay learnt Kalaripayattu, and Kathakali. When he wasn’t studying, he was teaching. That went on till lunch time. Evenings were spent at the Adyar Kalakshetra. “I became a member of the film club, so watched a lot of Indian and global cinema. And read voraciously — Malayalam poetry, Greek classics, Calvino, Kundera, Neruda… I realised that the magic of Marquez’ stories was what I had experienced during the all-night-long Kathakali and Koodiyattam performances long ago.” All what he read, saw and experienced, together helped “formulate my vision of performance arts”.

The vocabulary, structure and scientific body movements of the Indian classical dances were beautiful. But the context, somehow, didn’t sit right with Jay. “I felt a lack of authenticity. The filmmakers and writers I read had found their language, and I wanted a language too.”

Around 1985, in Chennai’s Music Academy, Jay saw a production by the legendary choreographer Merce Cunningham. “I remember I was fascinated but couldn’t completely understand it. I was still pondering over it when a few friends from London visited Dhananjayan’s dance school, where I used to teach. The director of Middlesex University was among them. He saw me perform, and told me to study dance in London.”

Jay went to the London School of Contemporary Dance in 1987. Ballet, stagecraft, anatomy, music, art history… he studied various subjects. This move also gave him an objective perspective on the dance scene in India. “I could look at it from a little distance and saw that contemporary dance needs an enabling force in India.”
The seed for Attakkalari was thus sown.

Setting up Attakkalari
He set up the Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts in Bangalore in 1992. His role was of a facilitator. “Learning cannot come from one teacher. You need multiple possibilities, wide exposure.” As the artistic director of Attakkalari, he wanted to provide that range of possibilities to the younger generation of dancers. “My aim is to bring different knowledge streams together, so that we would have a thriving contemporary dance scene here,” he explains.
In the beginning, Attakkalari was about a fluid group of poets, thinkers, filmmakers, theatre people, choreographers, dancers and visual artists who came together to discuss ideas for contemporary expressions. Jay was still working in London, and making frequent visits to host these creative discussions. In 2000, when Sri Ratan Tata Trust awarded him the corpus fund to start the work, he moved to Bangalore. “The space got ready in 2001, we were on.”

Does contemporary dance — ‘body movement’ as Jay likes to call it — stand in conflict with the classical dance forms? “Of course not. I admire all the classical forms, they are a valuable reservoir of traditional knowledge. But as a society, if we do not create new languages, the traditional knowledge system would simply get fossilised. Only if we have contemporary dance forms along with classical dance and an equally vibrant folk tradition can we claim to have a rich art scene.” It is when we make it ritualistic that it would spell trouble, he clarifies.

So what is Attakkalari now? Its mission is to spread the reach of contemporary performance arts. It makes dance a viable career option for young people. It has a Repertory Dance Company, which has been performing full-length, multimedia dance productions, choreographed by Jay. Their latest production, Meidhwani (Echoes of the Body), will be performed today at the Seoul International Dance Festival.

Attakkalari offers a diploma in movement arts and mixed media, an intensive one-year programme. The applicants are screened through auditions held in multiple cities. “We pick 20-25 students. The selection is thorough because this is no jolly course. About 15 students last till graduation,” says Eliam Rao, in-charge of the education and development wing. “It is tough, unbelievably tough,” she adds. Twenty six-year-old Keya Ann D’Souza agrees. She is a dancer from Mumbai, who enrolled for the programme to better her skills. “Well, to say the least, it transformed me. It gave a whole new perspective, and taught me a new vocabulary,” she says.

Attakkalari also has community outreach programmes, and conducts regular classes in contemporary dance, classical dance and Kalarippayattu for the public across all ages at their studios in Bangalore. They organise different modules for schools and corporate organisations as well.

Sums up Jay, “As dancers, if we are to make sense of our lives now, we need new languages.”