Mallika Sarabhai

Mallika Main

Mallika Sarabhai is a performer and creator of many talents. Her career has developed from being a young, internationally acclaimed, classical dancer and film personality, to being an activist and commentator on social issues.

Now an established artist she celebrates positive reaffirmation of images of womanhood through dance, theatre and writing. Following the rich and inspiring model of her mother Mrinalini, Mallika has placed herself firmly at the cutting edge of Indian dance and dance theatre.

In a culture which favours conservatism she wields the vocabularies of Indian traditions as trenchant tools to sculpt new reactions in her audiences. As dancer, actress, choreographer, writer, or instigator of community projects she challenges audiences to sit up and think, realign themselves to questions of ecology, women's place in society, gender awareness, cultural atrophy, the very place of the arts in our society.

Deeply rooted in Indian cultures, but open to the influences of her collaborations around the world she has synthesized her experiences to become one of the most exciting creative influences in India today. Dynamic, charming and dry-witted, she is a rare creature in the arts.

Mallika is co-director of Darpana Academy of Performing Arts in Ahmedabad, a unique centre for the arts which has performed all over India and all around the world. Here she directs the Darpana Performance Group; the Janavak

Folk and Tribal Dance Company; Darpana for Development; Darpana Communications; and the Darpana Conservatoire.

The Dancer

Malika Dancer
At the root of Mallika's performance is her expertise and deep knowledge of two forms of Indian classical dance, Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi from Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh respectively. As a young woman she won international awards for her classical dance, and she is still learning items from her gurus, some of which she alone in the world can perform.

Even in these forms she has rejected items which she feels stem from overtly patriarchal periods and which represent women as subservient, and has put together pieces celebrating the strength of the goddesses of the Hindu pantheon.

This is still the main element of her performance life, whether at international festivals or local cultural events, and the warmth and life with which she imbues these forms keeps her much in demand.

The Choreographer

In Indian dance there is no great tradition of creative choreography. It was Mrinalini Sarabhai who first used the Bharatanatyam vocabulary to speak of moods and themes other than the traditional devotional ones. She talked of bride burning and of pollution in her dance dramas. Mallika performed in these and absorbed the ideas but it is only in the last decade that she has started to choreograph herself, her company and even her mother. As she started to crystallize what it was she wanted to express through her work she drew on many elements to create her choreographic vocabulary. Of course the elements of her classical dance were there, but so were the rhythms and steps from the work of her folk dance company. She studied martial art forms from South India and from North East India, she observed and stylized everyday movements and gestures until she could create pieces which react to communal violence in India (Mean Streets on Earth), which celebrate rituals behind her dance (Thattukazhi), or the rites of passage of a woman (Ceremony 1). In these, and many more, she is still experimenting with other musics, with video accompaniment, with multi-arts forms. In a very real sense these interdisciplinary works are deeply in the tradition of Indian performance, and now these works too are being invited around the world.

The Theatre-Maker

Just as her choreography looks at issues of social importance, Mallika's theatre work has evolved into a new and vital form challenging people's preconceptions. Using her natural charm and with, a strong voice and her ability for story- telling and for directly addressing her audience with conviction, as well as her movement and dance skills, serious subjects have been tackled in a burst of refreshing work.

During her performance as Draupadi in Peter Brook's Mahabharata, she became aware of the need to make strong and positive statements about images of Indian womanhood, to counter the often misleading accounts by male commentators.This led to her creating "Shakti - The power of Women " in London which subsequently toured Britain, Holland and India.

Mallika Theatre

Its reappraisal of mythological, historical and contemporary female figures had stunning effect on audiences and quickly led to a second piece, "Sita's Daughters", which is an even harder hitting ( although often very funny) piece about women who refuse to accept an oppressive system. This piece was performed all over India from slums to metropolitan festivals and has been invited to Singapore, USA and Britain.

Using similar skills she teamed up with Nigerian performer Peter Badejo to throw light onto matters of cultural manipulation in the highly successful Itan Kahani- The story of stories. This was followed by a very ambitious project, a new piece blowing some fresh air through the subject of why do we commit violence for. In April 99 came In Search of the Goddess commissioned by the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC.

In recent years Mallika has managed to apply her artistic talents to her desire for social change in a series of unique projects. Working with terms of her most experienced Darpana performers, and training dozens of her rural and traditional artists, she has instituted programmes of using the performing arts to examine gender awarness, issues of violence and environmental issues in schools. AIDS awareness in slum areas and witch killing in rural areas. These interactive projects bring artists together with sociologists, scientists and local people to make challenging programmes often leading to community performance.