When Away: Land of Kings

Three of Emma’s toes on her right foot and two on her left are covered in blood blisters and the ball of her foot has a giant second-degree burn. She shyly admits to the other barefoot dancers that the ground was hot and rough; we were in a desert after all. The other dancers and musicians insist that she return to the earthen dance floor so that the late arriving gypsy daughter can see her dance. But Emma insists that the music be slower this time so she won’t have to spin as much. “Dire, dire,” she says. “Okay, Okay, dire,” responds the father of the clan. The musicians, dancers and myself are seated on a rug in front of a fake “traditional rajasthani home” in Shilpgram a sort of historical reenactment village except the model mud village isn’t historical but modern and there were no people reenacting or acting anything traditional. When we arrived to this ghost town we ordered lunch and swung on the rickety swing set while the unhired guides napped in the shade of an awning near the mud ticketbooth.
On the mat I’m seated next to the mother. While the others are distracted playing their instruments and watching Emma who is trying to restrict the amount of her twirling lest her overripe blisters pop, the mother sneaks a few drags from a cigarette she had hidden in her black head scarf
We weren’t always sitting on their performance mat. Before Emma got her blisters we were walking through the empty village and I spotted the traditional dancers who also spotted us. The mother smiled and stopped to ask if we wanted to see them perform and I quickly told her, “Yeh danser hai (Emma’s a dancer)” “Then she will also perform,” she said.
We sat on the dirt and watched the mother perform. Her dance was beautiful however it was lacking the organic joy of folk dance. As we noted throughout our travels in Rajasthan most of the dances we saw that week in performance halls and museums were folk dances and weren’t made for the stage. The dances were created for the liveliness of festivals, ceremonies and weddings. As a result there was always an element of joy missing from the performances. This was mostly the case here at Shilpgram until they discovered Emma was a dancer. In that exchange I think they rekindled their pride in their dance because we weren’t tourists who were only taking. We were giving too. After the mother danced we were invited to sit on the rug and then Emma danced and got her blisters.
In Emma’s second dance, after each of her ballet inspired contortions the gypsy daughter looks over at me with an open jaw as if to say “Did you see that?!.” When Emma finishes she limps to sit beside me and now it’s the daughter’s turn. The men play and she shows us her moves. The mother is now smoking in secrecy ten feet behind everyone. The daughter twirls, which causes her richly embroidered black and red dress to fly outwards into a disc shape. The two and three year old children dance offbeat on the side. Then her father puts a folded hundred rupee bill on the ground and the daughter goes into a back bend and picks up the bill with her mouth. I think that is our cue to do the same.

After this we speak in a mixture of Hindi, English and mime to talk about dance and one another’s culture. We find out that they are part of the Kalveli caste and they call themselves gypsies which was more than apparent in their dancing, a relative to Flamenco. After that they encourage us to visit them in their real home and we buy one of their cds for a special “artists’ price.” We say goodbye and I give Emma a galloping piggyback ride to the waiting autorickshaw so her blistered feet can take a rest.

Our last adventure was to Udaipur, Rajasthan, desert land of kings and colors. We arrived just in time for the Mewar festival where every night processions of beautifully dressed women carry idols down to the river, hoping for good husbands (and cursing the bad, and the men singing about missing their women who have gone down to the river and all sorts of man-woman love and angst is celebrated). We landed right in the middle of it and finally got those requisite Indian photos of women and young girls in colorful sarees. But as Emma appropriately observed the Rajasthani outfit is not a saree but a skirt-scarf combination draped over the head; it was her favorite outfit and she bought a skirt in the style. Though, the old Himalayan mountain women who were tied up in wool blankets and draped in their huge silver jewelry were pretty impressive too. It's a tough call. So here are a series of pictures from our last stint in India. We went horsebackriding, saw many performances and attended festival events. We even found an impressive puppet store and a puppeteer to take a few lessons from.

Puppet Stage draped in puppets

Men performing a traditional folk dance in which they move in a woven pattern and bang sticks with their partner to the rhythm of a drum. Performed in front of the temple.