The first thing I noticed was their hands. I was trying to watch the dancers as a whole, as one collective made of many moving bodies, but in the corner of my eye an occasional flicker of movement kept distracting my attention. I could never seem to catch it fully. It was a tiny burst and retreat, like some underwater creature that is both dangerous and delicate. The movement wasn’t on the downbeat (I couldn’t even understand where the downbeat was), and it didn’t come in any predictable 4/4 meter, normally so common in Western music. I decided to watch just their hands to understand how they were doing…whatever it was that they were doing.
As it turns out, this aspect of ghatu is not as complicated as I initially thought – although it is quite difficult to execute beautifully. As the ghatusari move with the music, they flick the middle fingers of both hands along with the beat of the madal (the two-headed drum). This flicking is a signature of ghatu, something I have not seen anywhere else in my somewhat limited searching.
Each repetition of the dance can, in some way, be divided into three sections. During the first, which is the most subtle, the ghatusari keep their hands low, holding onto their skirts right at the mid-thigh. They flick their fingers as they move, but their hands are otherwise still. In the second and third sections, they lift their hands and gently float and turn them as they dance, continuing to flick their fingers all the while. Depending on where they are in the story, they might be holding a prop (like a sickle to cut rice or a bow and arrow or a flute) or doing some other kind of gesture (like namaste hands or showing a measure of fabric) – inevitably, though, they continue to flick their fingers throughout. Like any good dancer, these ghatusari make it look easy. However, if you watch closely, you can see their hands tremble with effort.
Once I escaped the hypnosis of watching their hands, I tried to understand their feet. This was thoroughly complicated by the fact that they wear floor-length skirts made of a heavy fabric and folded to make pleats that obscure any view of the feet’s movement. Even though I watched for five days, ten hours each day, I couldn’t really tell what their feet were doing – not in great enough detail to attempt the dance myself. The only clear thing I managed to see was that for each of the three sections in every repetition of the dance, they start with something I have creatively labeled the “initial step.” This is where the left foot steps behind the right as the body turns slowly in that same direction. As I learned later by taking a brief lesson from one of the ghatusari, this “initial step” is essentially the only time the foot is lifted; otherwise, the feet stay in contact with the earth, turning the body through small shuffling motions instead. The older ghatusari also keep rhythm with the madal through their feet as they dance, in the same way that the finger flicks match the madal. This is surprisingly difficult to do, hence why the younger ghatusari generally don’t find the rhythm in their feet.
In ghatu, the dancer’s body stays mainly in one location in space. They dance upon a grass mat – two to four dancers in close quarters – the mat that they blessed with cow dung and sunpaani on the first day. Rather than locomoting through space and using the expanse of a proscenium stage, as in many Western dance recitals, each ghatusari stays connected to her own invisible axis. In the second and third sections of each repetition, they move in a spiral motion up and down this axis, starting from standing and moving elegantly down to their haunches and back up again, over and over. The movement reminds one of a strand of DNA. As I watched, sometimes I felt as though the feet were leading the motion and the head followed, like the tail of a comet. Other times it seemed as though the head were leading, with the body and feet trailing behind, serpentine around the axis.
At several points throughout each repetition, the dancers bow their heads low to the ground, either in front of the singers or the sousare. This is not a bow forward, but rather a bow to the side. They are down on their haunches, left foot protruding out to the left a bit for balance, and then they lean over their right sides to touch their heads to the earth. This incredibly taxing move, called maan rakhne (or giving respect) happens at least four times within a single repetition of the music and dance. In a day of ghatu, I am certain it happens more than one hundred times.
The ghatusari repeat these motions – the finger flicks, the initial steps, the spiraling up and down the axis, the maan rakhne – over and over for hours and days. These elements are the foundation of the ghatu dance, found in every single repetition, no matter where they are in the story. With such extensive repetition, it is tempting to think of ghatu as simple or unrefined, but it is deceptively complex, surprisingly difficult.
They move slowly, smoothly, without hurry or tension, but always with a quiet pulsing energy. It is like fog coming up a hillside, or water ebbing and flowing, or molasses coiling into a pot. Their eyes stay cast downward, watching their hands, with their faces neutral and peaceful, in spite of the sweat beading above their lips. Though the rhythm of the madal feels deeply complicated to my Western-trained ear, their fingers, their feet, the entire movement of their bodies matches the beat. As an observer, you have to wonder if the dancers are leading and the drummers following, or vice versa.
When the final note of the music ends and the ghatusari give their final maan rakhne of that repetition, they drop all pretense of performance and often collapse to the side of the mat in exhaustion. They laugh and make faces and call to the other dancers to step in for a few rounds. Sometimes the singers start the next verse even while the ghatusari stay seated, sweating and tired, and Gurubaa (the lead singer) affectionately snaps at them to get up and dance. Just as the beginning the entire ghatu process stood on absolutely zero ceremony, the performance stays that way for the first three days. Fully engaged in the moments of performance, and fully disengaged when the music stops.
Tune in next week to read about the magic of the fourth and fifth days of the ghatu festival…