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Ileana Citaristi: The Italian dancer who learned Kathakali, mastered Odissi, Chhau

Who doesn't love to dance like no one's watching? I have just finished reading iconic Italian dancer Ileana Citaristi's memoir "My Journey: A Tale of Two Births", where the PadmaShree awardee and legendary Odissi dancer candidly shares her humble beginnings from a small town in Italy, the rebel within her that persuades her to follow her heart and propels her to begin her 'second birth'.  

                                                 [Source: Amazon India]



A striking fact about Ileana is that she is candid about everything including her relationships, ones that broke and ones that ended tragically.  



"With him, I used to discover the signs of nature hidden in the formation of the rocks, in the meanders of the rivulets, in the changing patterns of the flying birds, in the designs created on earth by the roots of the trees and in the sky by the play of the clouds. Everything had a correlation, every coincidence and similarities of shapes and numbers were considered signs of a vast layer of interrelationship between man and nature, in which each small change was reflected in the entire design. Every event had a reason to be and was perfectly in tune with the understanding of it."



This is the kind of rare openness that can be so empowering.

An Italian Dancer's Journey to Kerala



Travelling all the way to Kerala, a journey that changes her direction towards Odisha and paves the way for her destiny to become one of India's most respected Odissi dancers, who learned and mastered the dance from the legends themselves. Her love for Indians is made clear right from her first visit to India. 



"One of the first things that struck me was the extraordinary sense of hospitality I experienced; poor families with very meagre incomes and uncertain occupation, yet large hearted and very eager to share," she writes.



Ileana comes to Kerala to train under renowned Kathakali artist Krishnan Namboodiri. One of the 'frightening' incidents she refers to is about a 'huge black cloud' that was coming towards her. That turned out to be her first experience of Kerala's famed monsoon!



Referring to Kerala's women, she writes: "I thought I had never seen women as beautiful and mysterious as the Kerala ones. I could read a story of pride and dignity in the pitch black of their eyes and in the lustrous colour of their skin; a story going back to the beginning of the human race as if each of them were impersonating the original mother from whom the entire creation was born. I was feeling skinny and dry in comparison with them..."



Coping with Odia culture, learning Odissi Dance

On the advice of Krishnan Namboodiri who recommends that she should learn Odissi, Ileana sets out to learn the dance from one of the best masters himself. The beginning is never easy. 

For instance, she highlights the 'culture shock' of living in a typical Odia household where "all our concepts of domestic privacy, individual bedrooms, allocation of space for different purposes went with the wind."



Ileana is surprised by the fact that, "On the same floor, vegetables were being cut, plates were being placed and bedrolls were spread according to the need of the hour."



"One word in Odia was enough to make everybody's face open up with a big smile and eyes shining with surprise and joy, how warm has always been the hospitality in the many houses I had free access to," the dancer recalls in her memoirs.



Little delights find a way into Ileana's life such as buying her first patta saree (silk saree) and her father's gift of buying her a Luna to travel around Cuttack which the writer recalls with fond rememberance, "The Luna is still with me even after thirty years....Roaming around the lanes of Cuttack on my Luna, I used to feel like a 'heroine'...Luna and Cuttack for me have become synonymous. For ten years, be it any sort of weather and at any hour of the day and night, people would see me moving around in my bike. It became an almost extension of myself." 

This book has been an eye-opener to understand the challenges that a dancer has to tackle, particularly if she is a foreigner in India. While Ileana's rise in the world of classical Odissi dance won her the appreciation of stalwarts, she is of the opinion that she continuously faced considerable challenges, most of which arose due to the fact that she is a 'foreigner'. 



For instance, in her Guruji's home, she mentions that she was forbidden from entering the kitchen or the puja room. Once while staying in the Guruji's home, Ileana recalls that she had purchased a packet of sliced bread and had not finished eating it. To keep it fresh, she placed it in the refrigerator, but her Guru's wife was incensed and felt that this was "pollution" and she removed the entire content of the refrigerator the very same day. 

Also, Ileana was never allowed to participate in the annual Konark Dance Festival organised by the Department of Tourism until 2008, almost 29 years after her stay in Odisha. 

Ileana Citaristi: Chhhau dance masterpieces



None of these experiences deter Ileana's love for Odissi as her passion. She takes everything in her stride - the rejection, the humiliation, the criticism. Her openness becomes her strength and something that struck me as a trait to nurture in order to grow into one's own full potential. Besides mastering Odissi from Kelucharan Mohapatra, Ileana also masters the complex Chhau dance, where she performs her signature pieces - Shiva Tandava, Mahadev, Dandi among others. Ileana's breakthrough performance scripted history in Chhau dance through 'Panchabhuta'.



A chance meeting with Najma Heptulla, the then President of the ICCR, presents an opportunity to Illeana to convey that classical dancers of foreign origin are being kept away from prestigious events. Following this, Ileana received the first fully sponsored tour for the first time in the history of ICCR!     



Ileana fondly recollects that she was even adopted by Harapriya Devi or Dunguri APa, one of the 'Devadasis' of the Jagannatha Temple at Puri, from whom she learned the rituals and rules of the temple way of life. More interestingly, the two become so close that Dunguru Apa adopts Ileana as her daughter!


Turning up at Sanjay Leela Bhansali's doorestep


In her candid style, Ileana refers to an 'unfulfilled target' with reference to Sanjay Leela Bhansali, at whose doorstep she appeared without any appointment but he was gracious enough to welcome her. To her surprise, Sanjay Leela Bhansali already knew her and remembered her from the days of Kelucharan Mohapatra's workshops. It turns out that he too had had a brief stint with Odissi dance. Though Sanjay Leela Bhansali took her address, Ileana sadly notes that he has not contacted her for a future film and it remains her 'dream still unfulfilled.'



The author refers to the biggest challenges she faced when she opened her dance school in Odisha - the lack of commitment from her students. For her students, learning dance seems to be more like a stop-gap arrangement till marriage. 



Referring to 'racket of coaching schools' and 'rote learning system of education', Ileana points out that students do not ask the meanings of songs or the reasons for a certain choice of movements. They are content with 'readymade information' instead of engaging with a certain amount of creativity that has to be applied while forming a definition.



"I always taught that one is 'naked' on the stage, you are revealed by the way you dance. You cannot cheat when you are performing; it is not only your technical preparation which is revealed but also the inner and most secret aspects of your personality," she writes.



As a dancer 'Guru', Ileana's disappointment with Odia students is evident.



As Ileana wraps up her memoirs, she leaves us with more questions than answers, a rarity to behold and experience in a dancer's memoirs. Ending with her mother's passing away, she writes, "I never wanted to accumulate things and yet I have managed to leave behind traces not in one but in ....two continents. Objects which are left behind like traces of footprints in the sand; objects which continue to narrate a story long after the departure of the Master. But then a story needs to have listeners to justify itself, will anyone be there for mine?"


Comments

@Amit - Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts on the book review. Do let me know your thoughts on the book too.

@Anonymous: Would you read the book first and let me know your thoughts on it?

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