CK Balagopalan
by V Ramnarayan
On 4 September, I attended a function at Kalakshetra, Chennai, to mark the release of Leap of Faith, a book on veteran dance guru CK Balagopalan, the 79 year old alumnus of Kalakshetra I have respected and admired. Speaking on the occasion, the author, Balagopalan's disciple and a nun working in a France-based Christian mission, recalled the generosity with which Balagopalan and his daughter Prithvija taught her and accepted her into the Bharatanatyam fold. Balan's childhood friend and co-artist of seven decades' association, spoke of Balagopal's natural expressiveness and emotional appeal, not to mention his brilliant rhythmic capabilities, thanks to his training with Chandu Panicker Asan, who brought both the boys to Kalakshetra and Rukmimidevi. Sujatha Vijayaraghavan described his extraordinary versatility, and I extolled his devotion to Rukmimi Devi, Kalakshetra and Hanuman. I had been associated with the book right from the beginning, and actually wrote its foreword. Here it is, in full:
LEAP OF FAITH
Mesmeric Hanuman of Kalakshetra
By Eliza Louis
Foreword
"Balagopal Anna" or "Balan Anna" has been a dancer and dance teacher I have admired ever since I first saw him on stage some 45 years ago. It was at what is now called the Rukmini Arangam inside Kalakshetra, then an open air theatre, where you sat under the moonlit sky and watched the magic wrought by CK Balagopalan and his dedicated band of colleagues unified by their devotion to their art, Kalakshetra and Rukmini Devi Arundale. The name of 'Athai' or Rukmini Devi probably came first in their morning prayers, so total was their reverence for her.
No doubt about it, Balagopalan was a magician on stage. How else do you explain the mesmeric effect his portrayals of a wide variety of roles have had on succeeding generations of audiences, even though he is a tiny little man, who looks about as formidable as some of the calves in the campus that Athai was so fond of petting? Thin as a reed, dressed in a simple white shirt or jibba and veshti, Balagopalan looked mild and unprepossessing in real life, though the mischief in his eyes often hinted at hidden depths. But once on stage, he assumed a veritable viswarupa, whether he was playing Hanuman, Krishna, Sakuni or Bharata. Of all these varied roles, Hanuman was perhaps his favourite character. He once told me, "My fortunes changed dramatically once I started playing Hanuman. Anjaneya's grace led to many people helping me start my own dance school after retirement from Kalakshetra." Onlookers forgot his small frame as he brought the monkey god alive so magnificently. It was Balagopal's unshakeable faith and devotion that made it possible. With his expressive eyes and mobile face honed by his Kathakali training under his first asan Chandu Panikkar, he stole the hearts of Kalakshetra's sophisticated rasikas in a phenomenal variety of parts including Lakshmana, Bharata, Ravana as the kapata sanyasi, Kannappar (one of his most poignant presentations) and Maha Vishnu. I watched many of these great performances at both the Rukmini Arangam and the later auditorium at Kalakshetra. Every time I was completely overpowered by his rivetting abhinaya and brilliant nritta, both driven by his bhakti to God, Kalakshetra and Rukmini Devi.
The author Eliza Louis and Balaogopalan are both equally lucky--the sishya in her great good fortune of being accepted by such a wonderful guru, and the guru in finding a devout disciple with the academic rigour of a painstaking scholar with true understanding of the art and personality of her mentor. Fortunately, Elizabeth Majella is apparently no dry academician. While she has taken great trouble to collect and thoroughly check her facts, she also reveals unusual storytelling ability. The result is a fascinating biography of an outstanding dancer and dance guru, which runs almost parallel to the story of Kalakshetra, the institution which discovered the talent of a slip of a boy from Kerala and gave him all the opportunities to evolve into a major exponent of the dance drama and a guru who is keeping the Kalakshetra tradition alive through teaching.
The dissertation is neatly divided into five chapters. The first is an account of Balagopalan's life journey. It is a thrilling story that begins with a scouting mission in search of Balagopalan by Kalakshetra's Kathakali asan Chandu Panikkar at the behest of Rukmini Devi and a chance encounter that led to VP Dhananjayan joining Balagopalan on the train to Madras. Though Balagopalan preferred football to books during his early years at Kalakshetra, and as he progressed as a dancer, Bharata Natyam to Kathakali. Panikkar's main pupils were Balagopalan, Dhananjayan and Kunhiraman, each a towering figure in the institution in the years to come, though Dhananjayan and Kunhiraman left Kalakshetra for other pastures, while Balan and a younger star pupil, Janardhanan, stayed back till their retirement. This part of the work deals with all of Balagopalan's gurus from Asan and Rukmini Devi to other, younger gurus like NS Jayalakshmi, Pushpa Shankar, Adyar Lakshman, Asantha, and the relentless perfectionist Sarada Hoffman. Peria Sarada Teacher was a major influence on all the students.
The opening chapter also contains many heartwarming references to Balagopalan's colleagues, his deep friendship with VP and Shanta Dhananjayan. Dhananjayan and Balagopalan were "like Krishna and Kuchela", we learn. The author has nicely captured her guru's affection and respect for other colleagues like Janardhanan, Krishnaveni, Kala, Ambika and Savithri. His admiration for Krishnaveni is clear in his choice of their performance as Sita and Hanuman in Choodamani Pradanam as his all -time favourite.
The first chapter stresses the vital role of his wife Leela in Balagopalan's life especially in the second half of his career. From her entry into the Kalakshetra campus and the idyll that followed there, to the time the family with children Pranesh and Prithvija moved to their current Kottivakkam residence, Leela has remained "the same village girl, whose life and joy center around her family." Here we gain a glimpse into Balagopalan's temper. "If you are patient at the time of his outbursts, he'll just surrender to you later," says Leela. The picture of a responsible and caring father is complete in this chapter. Equally important is the fact that "Kalkshetra's world view and its values have shaped their children into cultured and refined individuals." Both Pranesh and Prithvija trained to be dancers under their father's watchful eye. The talented Prithvija eventually joined Kalakshetra as a full time scholar and continues to pursue a career in Bharata Natyam career with great commitment.
We also learn about a rare aspect of Balagopalan's character--his love of nature and animals. Amazingly, Balagopalan reared a squirrel and a mongoose as a boy, and once rode a donkey on the beach with disastrous results as his friend Dhananjayan remembers.
Chapter 2 gives a detailed account of the many variegated roles Balagopalan played in dance dramas. Rukmini Devi said of him that the small man could "fill the stage with his presence and make everything else seem puny." He took every character he portrayed seriously and studied it thoroughly to know both its positive and negative aspects. He thought of the character all his waking hours, meditating on them and visualising them, even dreaming of them after falling asleep. "Right from my first performance in 1955 until today, my identification with the character is hundred per cent."
The author speaks of Balagopalan's refined abhinaya, something that easily set him apart from most dancers of his time. She quotes Krishnaveni's daughter Gayatri Balagurunathan as saying, "He was such a lovely Krishna on stage with his enchanting looks" in such productions as Rukmini Kalyanam and Bhakta Jayadeva.
The greatest space in the thesis is devoted to Balagopalan's iconic interpretation of the role of Hanuman, the crowning glory of his career. "In each performance, spectators waited for those for those entrance jumps and landings which were always in diverse postures." He once injured himself seriously during one of these exciting pravesams, only to resume dancing after a longer interval than usual when he received some serious first aid. Typically Balagopalan blamed his relative lack of rigour in his usual pujas in the run-up to that production. The detailed coverage of the many diverse characters and emotions Balagopalan played, from the devotion of Anjaneya to the cunning of Sakuni enhances the value of the dissertation as a guide to aspiring dance students.
The final chapter speaks of Balagopalan's dreams and expectations. Not unexpectedly, it also deals with regrets and disappointments including the ruing of lack of solo opportunities in his youth and the meagre earnings during a lifetime of devotion to Kalakshetra. In this, he was not alone, of course. Awards and titles have come late in life to him, but they must be all the sweeter for that reason. He takes great pride in the achievements of his daughter Prithvija now.
In conclusion, Elizabeth Majella pinpoints the essential Balagopalan by saying, "All through his growing years, and even today in his seventies, he has not lost the wonder and inquisitive nature of a child." That probably explains best the Balagopalan magic as an artiste and his joy as a teacher.
This is an extremely readable, entertaining and illuminating biography of a great artist and lovable human being. Congratulations to Elizabeth Majella and CK Balagopalan.
V Ramnarayan
Chennai