How playing female roles alter male artistes’ gender perspective

It was a chilly February evening in Konark, Odisha. The majestic Sun Temple was being painted in warm golden hues by the rays of the setting sun. A little away from this 13th century stone edifice, at the Konark Natya Mandap (the venue for the annual Konark Music and Dance Festival) young boys ran around joyfully. Soon, beckoned by their guru, they entered a small room behind the stage, where they were quickly dressed up as girls in elaborate costumes, bright make-up and beaded jewellery. When they finally appeared on stage, the Gotipua dancers stunned everyone with their grace and agility. 

What the boys did was carry forward an ancient tradition of cross-dressing to dance for Lord Jagannath. Gotipua is a precursor to the classical dance style of Odissi, which, ironically, is now dominated by women.

Not just Odissi, classical dance forms such Kathakali and Kuchipudi and some folk forms too were once exclusively practised by men, who also took on female characters. The tradition, largely, continues. Of course, Kuchipudi has undergone a complete transformation from being a male preserve to becoming a women’s bastion. While women call the moves in India, in the West, male ballet choreographers and company directors exert immense influence. In 2022, the U.S.-based lawyer and activist Elizabeth B. Yntema’s Dance Data Project put out startling numbers that set the ballet world thinking seriously about sexism and gender inequality.

Gender identity is an intrinsic aspect of dance. It is largely impacted by socio-cultural values or rather dance reflects the gendered social cultural patterns. Since the body is the core of dance, acting as a site for personal and cultural expression, movements have inherently been divided as masculine and feminine. This divide has, over the years,  been shrinking with women getting into choreography, curation and teaching. However, it may not have been easy for women to navigate the male gaze, which perpetuated harmful gender stereotypes and limited creative possibilities of art. Today, dance has emerged as a weapon for women to fight patriarchal power structures, allowing her to showcase her perspectives, experiences and emotions.

In the month of March, when we celebrate women’s strength in owning her identity, we ask a few male dancers, who often play women characters, on how it feels to experience womanhood, albeit briefly on stage.

Srikanth Natarajan says it is extremely challenging to portray women such as the assertive queen Chandramathi.
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The Hindu Archives

Srikanth Natarajan, a Bharatanatyam and Bhagavata Mela artiste, who is renowned for playing the heroine in various Bhagavata Mela dance dramas, feels it is extremely challenging to portray women such as the assertive queen Chandramathi, the gentle Sita, the daring Rukmini and the intelligent Savithri. I even once portrayed a pregnant Devaki. “The costume, make-up and mannerisms, to some extent, help me metamorphosise into these characters, but it’s the emotional transformation that matters more. Observation and internalisation are crucial because in Bhagavata Mela you portray a character, not for a few minutes but for hours together as plays often last the whole night. For over four decades I have been playing female roles, and it has helped me gain a deeper perspective of a woman’s life.”

Kuchipudi dancer Avijit Das likes to look at art beyond the gender divide. “Though I hail from a male-oriented dance drama tradition, in my solo performances I usually don’t choose nayika-centric pieces. I feel art is about self-expression and need not be associated with masculinity or femininity. There must be a way to escape gendered movement and just have dancing bodies, not dancing boys and girls.”

Kuchipudi dancer Avijit Das.
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Special Arrangement

Any discussion about men in dance would be incomplete without a mention of trailblazing American modern dancer and choreographer Ted Shawn. He had taken it up as a mission to establish dance “as a legitimate medium for the creative male artiste”. In 1930, Ted Shawn, launched the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival (one of America’s oldest festivals) and created a new dance order with his all-male troupe. He also changed the image of the male dancer as the epitome of masculinity.

Conditioned by social and cultural stereotypes, dancers do tend to present gender in their movements. But this mostly happens when they are in front of an audience. On a personal level, dancing, to a performer, is an intimate experience and gender is a non-issue to a moving body.

Says noted Yakshagana artiste Radhakrishna Urala, who specialises in donning female roles: “Traditionally, men always played the role of women in Yakshagana (a theatrical art form popular in coastal Karnataka). It is a hugely challenging task. You have to learn the style of speaking, gait and body language to ensure audience involvement with the character. They need to believe that a woman is on stage.”

 Noted Yakshagana artiste Radhakrishna Urala
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Special Arrangement

Sometimes, this  could become a disadvantage too. ““Some audience members try to come too close, or yank at the sari, despite knowing that a man is playing the part. I then wonder how hard it must be for women to deal with such things,,” says Radhakrishna.

When Radhakrishna got to play the character of Puttamathe in Champa Shetty’s Kannada play Akku, he drew from memories of his grandmother. When he reprised the role in the film Ammachi Emba Nenapu, nobody could believe it was a man playing the role, until he came out to meet the audience after the end-credits rolled.

Kathakali artiste Kottakkal C M Unnikrishnan sometimes gets so deeply involved with the characters that he begins to think about what went wrong and how it could have been resolved. “I have played Mohini, Damayanti, Lalitha and a few more, and each time I go up on stage it requires immense emotional and physical preparation. It can’t stop with perfect costumes and make up, you need to engage and understand these women.”

Kathakali artiste Kottakkal C M Unnikrishnan
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Special Arrangement

It’s past midnight when Melattur comes alive during the annual Bhagavata Mela utsavam, held in the month of May. On the makeshift stage facing the Varadaraja Perumal temple in the agraharam, Srikanth appears as queen Chandramathi, whose life has been reduced to that of an ordinary woman. She runs into the forest looking for her son who has died of a snake bite. As she wails holding his body in her hands, in the reflection of the LED lights you see the audience crying along. Srikanth had made Chandramathi his own. For a brief moment in time, the gender divide had been blurred.