A saga of nine yards

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What is the most compelling memory that you have of the annual day gatherings in your school? This correspondent doesn’t quite remember the prizes and the general excitement, but has startlingly clear memories of the countless saris that have unravelled and helplessly collapsed around unsuspecting students as they pranced and gambolled on stage. Needless to say, if the same happened to a consummate classical dancer, it would cause much consternation and a fair amount of mirth. Simultaneously, it would be presumptuous to assume that widely prevalent forms of dance costuming are always the most comfortable representation of dance attire.
Classical dance goes beyond angika abhinaya and also privileges aharya abhinaya; so a costume must ideally function within the aesthetic of a particular dance form. However, dancers are increasingly interrogating what they seek from their dance, and trying to find comfortable personal styles that also conform to certain aesthetic boundaries. Dancer Rukmini Vijayakumar designs her own streamlined Bharatanatyam costumes, explaining that they are not radically different but allow for a greater degree of comfort.
“I can still wear the older costume if I’m doing abhinaya, but not for nritta. When I did backbends wearing the usual Bharatanatyam costume, the pallu often broke free of the waistband and would hang loose in an unappealing manner. While doing karanas and jumps, I would end up tearing the costumes I wore,” she describes.
Vijayakumar, who often buys swatches of material instead of sarees, must face different reactions from her audience. She says, “No one has specified that a certain material or colour is traditional. Sometimes I don’t find the colours I like in sarees. The costume should enhance your dance, not hinder it. I do come across the occasional viewer who is piqued because my fan is transparent. But I’m not altering the aesthetic of a Bharatanatyam costume; I understand its connotations and I wouldn’t dance in shorts or tailor costumes in denim.”
Some dancers design costumes based on the specifications in old dance texts, while others might make modifications that seek to do more justice to the form, and complement its movements. They tweak costumes for various reasons, but they all converge at a dance tailor’s studio. Ghulambhai, a popular tailor for classical dance costumes in Mumbai, gives his take on changing costume trends. He says, “I have been tailoring costumes since 1965 and have straddled the worlds of cinema, fashion and dance. I know how people’s bodies will look on stage with a certain cut or drape. Tastes have changed and we have to consider what our customers want. Sometimes they want changes because they are swayed by what the audience tells them. But my experience helps me understand what works best for the dance style and a person’s figure. Most of the changes that dancers ask us to make conform to the aesthetic of the dance. It is also a matter of personal choice and I am willing to co-operate with them.”
Moreover, the economy of costumes is also an interesting consideration. Every costume requires a huge investment in the form of an expensive sari which may be cut, stitched and is usually beyond salvage after a few sweaty and energetic performances. The sari costume used in Bharatanatyam is often held together by light stitches without cutting the cloth so that dancers can pull out the stitches and use the costume as a regular sari once it has retired from the stage.
Dealing with plain lengths of cloth is also appealing because they can be used to fashion costumes of various kinds, depending on the context. They are sometimes a more economical and sustainable choice for large-scale dance institutions. Hari Padman, a lecturer at Kalakshetra, articulates these concerns. “Even for daily practice, we use a nine-yard veshti. It is just a plain length of cloth, so it doesn’t snag anywhere. We are free to drape it according to the contours of the body and the requirements of the dance. A stitched costume, though it allows for quick costume changes, must be tailored to fit a particular person. This represents a problem for costumes that are institutional property because the same costume may be used by several people of different sizes.”
Also, with weaves constantly changing and becoming extinct, it is easier to maintain antique drapes when external embellishments in the form of stitching are minimal or absent. Padman explains, “When I act in Kalakshetra’s dance dramas, I may wear saris that Rukmini Devi Arundale personally selected way back in the 1970s. The saris might have not survived thirty years of dancing had they been cut and stitched into costumes.”