‘The Priestess of Hindu Dance’: Leila Sokhey’s Repertoire and Its Reception in the Netherlands and Germany (1927–38)

Abstract

Leila Sokhey, who became known as Madame Menaka, is recognized as a protagonist in the so-called Indian dance revival of 1923–47. Her dance embodied a marked ambivalence, for while it was part of a nationalist cultural endeavour, it was soundly grounded in a Western form of the aesthetics of Oriental dance. A variety of sources indicate that this stemmed from her own hybrid identity, as well as from her wish to fulfil the expectations of European audiences. Her art was considered ancient and deeply spiritual in the Netherlands and Germany. Prominent Dutch reviewers considered themselves knowledgeable about Hindu religious dance and suggested that its most authentic form existed in the colonial Dutch Indies rather than in India, whereas German reviewers adhered to and propagated the national socialist ideology and construction of India. Nonetheless, critics questioned whether it was possible to comprehend dance fully from a fundamentally different cultural tradition.

‘Magnificent is Menaka’s appearance, each of her steps is a word, each of her movements is language’, raved an anonymous Bad Tölz reviewer. Writing for Tölzer Zeitung, the mouthpiece of the National Socialist Party, the critic nevertheless concluded that, because it was ‘racially bound’ (artgebunden), the art on display could never ‘correspond to his soul’ (Anon 1936d).¹ This review is part of the extensive press coverage that ‘Menaka’s Indian ballet’ received during her two-year European tour, with around 750 performances.

Menaka is the stage name of Leila Roy-Sokhey (1899–1947), who had made her debut almost a decade before the German performances and who gained recognition as a dancer and choreographer of Kathak, which is today one of India’s eight classical dances. Sokhey’s work is thought to have contributed to the dance reforms spearheaded by anti-colonial nationalists (Schlage, Chap. 7 in this volume).

Earlier studies have pinpointed Sanskritization, or Hinduization, as fundamental in the reinvention of dance under Indian nationalism. Anti-colonial discourses asserted that India’s value lay in its ancient customs. Its Sanskrit literary works, plastic arts, and architecture highlighted the equivalence, if not superiority, of India compared with Classical Greece. Dance in particular, was regarded as an embodiment of India’s ancient past, for it provided a profoundly spiritual way of engaging with quintessentially Hindu traditions free from any Islamic or European influences (Bhattacharjya 2011: 484; Walker 2014b).

To modify Kathak’s choreographic repertoire and renew the movement’s vocabulary, the nationalists not only made use of temple sculptures, Hindu rituals, and Sanskrit treatises on dance and music, but also produced a homogenous history that reconstructed the art’s connection with an ancient past while distancing it from contemporary performers (Walker 2014b). In her critical historiography of Kathak, Walker (2014a) argued that Sokhey adopted an ambivalent approach to her artistry by presenting Hindu mythological themes and stories, but making no apparent attempt to modify or sanskritize the repertoire. Photographs and contemporary films from the 1930s show Menaka ballet productions rooted in Oriental dance in terms of form, concept, and costume (Walker 2014a: 119–21). Oriental dance emerged in the late nineteenth century when Western artists choreographed and performed dances they deemed Eastern in content, movements, costumes, and music. Although Oriental dancers propagated Western colonialist imagery, dance historians include Asian dancers who presented this genre in Europe (Schlage, Chap. 7 in this volume).

In this chapter, I build on Walker’s insights into the seeming paradox of Sokhey’s works being part of a nationalist project, yet at the same time conforming to the aesthetics of Oriental dance. I start by trying to identify which elements in her trajectory were shaped by Sanskritization and which by Orientalism. While Walker examined Sokhey’s productions from 1934 onwards, by consulting the previously unexamined letters she wrote between 1928 and 1930, I shall look into an earlier part of her career. In addition, although already covered by prior research (Schlaffke 2022: 71–7; Walker 2014a: 119–20), I will consider what Sokhey had to say in an essay about her engagement with dance revivalists in the early 1930s.

I then shift the focus to European receptions of the Indian ballet. For the Dutch response, I examine approximately fifty newspaper reviews and, for the German one, I rely on the detailed analyses of Schlaffke (2022: 111–41) and Schwaderer (2023). I address the critics’ responses to Sokhey’s views on revitalizing an ancient Indian tradition in the two countries in which she performed most extensively. All the sources used here can be found in ‘the Menaka archive’, an online database dedicated to Sokhey’s performances (See Schlaffke, Schwaderer and Kanhai, Chap. 12 in this volume) (Fig. 8.1).

Fig. 8.1

Leila Sokhey-Roy. (Figure caption from Allard Pierson, theatre collection, archive number 200000220.000, licensed under CC-BY 4.0)

A brief overview of Leila Sokhey’s personal and artistic background serves as a starting point for the enquiry. Damayanti Joshi, a member of the Indian ballet company that performed in Europe, wrote the only known biography of her. According to her account, Sokhey had a British mother and high-caste Indian father. As a student at St Paul’s School in London, she was a burgeoning talent on the violin, but her father, a practising lawyer, objected to her performing in public. After marrying a military physician and biochemist, Captain Sahib Singh Sokhey (1887–1971), she pursued her dance career in earnest and, following her Indian debut in 1928, travelled to Europe, where she appeared on stages in France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. On her return to India, she worked with traditional Kathak dance masters, and started to choreograph Indian ballets, which she put on in India, Southeast Asia (1934–35), and Europe (1936–38). Until her premature death in 1947 (Joshi 1989), she continued her career as a dancer and choreographer, and opened a dance school near Mumbai.

Indian Debut

Sokhey’s debut in 1928 was ground-breaking because religious and social conventions forbade public displays of art by upper-caste women. A few weeks after her first stage appearance, she wrote a letter saying that ‘even the most orthodox Indian vernacular press from whom I really expected a bad account, as they hate the idea of Indian ladies dancing, even they were most complimentary’ (Sokhey, 7 April 1928).

All the retrievable newspaper reviews of Sokhey’s debut were written by Kanaiyalal Hardevram Vakil (1890/1–1937). Joshi (1989: 22) claimed that Vakil, an art critic with The Bombay Chronicle, was one of Sokhey’s main collaborators, although it cannot be confirmed if he was involved in staging her debut. In a long article in The Modern Review, Vakil (1928: 691) explained that Sokhey identified three sources as responsible for the ‘resuscitation’ of dance. The first of these consisted of the Sanskrit treatises on dance and drama—Nāṭyaśāstra, Abhinayadarpaṇa, and Daśarūpakam—that Orientalist scholarship had made accessible to the nationalist intelligentsia (O’Shea 2007: 31–2). Between 1862 and 1865, American Orientalist Fitzedward Hall (1825–1901) published the earliest translation of the Daśarūpakam, an exposé on dramaturgy. Hall had also been the first to publish four chapters of the Nāṭyaśāstra, a compendium dealing with all theatre-related subjects and generally dated around the second century ad. Sections of the work were discovered in European archives between 1865 and 1890. Besides the works of French Orientalists, a Sanskrit version of the Nāṭyaśāstra was eventually published in India in 1894, but only the first seven chapters were available to the public before 1936 (Rangacharya 1996: 4). The Mirror of Gesture (Coomaraswamy 1917) contains the English translation of the Abhinayadarpaṇa by renowned art historian and critic A. K. Coomaraswamy (1877–1947).

The second source responsible for the reconstruction of dance came from paintings and sculptures. Here, Vakil claimed that Sokhey believed that the plastic arts contained ‘more authentic and direct, and perhaps more fruitful evidence and data’ than the Sanskrit treatises. He then buttressed her view with his praise for her dance Ajanta Darshan, but it remains uncertain if Sokhey had been influenced by the suite, Ajanta Frescoes, that Ivan Clustine had choreographed for Pavlova in 1923 (Bhattacharjya 2011: 486). Vakil regarded the Buddhist rock carvings as the epitome of ‘Indian’ art, as evidence of a spirituality that had lasted throughout the entire history of the region: ‘it lives in the figure and features, costumes and gesture of the Indian woman, alike the source of their inspiration and the triumph of their immortal art’ (Vakil 1928: 289).

Vakil both acknowledged and rejected the third source Sokhey had mentioned as being responsible for the revival of dance, namely the performances of women from hereditary communities. Nonetheless, he lauded Sokhey for her ‘courage’ in reclaiming the ‘degraded and scorned’ dance of the nautch, the Anglicized term for dancers from the hereditary communities. Dance scholars from the 1980s onward, have considered the marginalization of hereditary artists as a crucial characteristic of the revival movement. While India’s regional courts protected the rights of dancers and musicians from hereditary communities, these artists, or courtesans, had an ambivalent social status. That they were versed in literature, poetry, and politics accorded them some influence, but they were stigmatized for engaging in non-marital relationships with their patrons. Concerns about women’s social positions evolved into a civilizing and purifying mission under British colonial rule, with the ‘anti-nautch movement’, in particular, construing these women as lower-class prostitutes. The so-called revival in dance hence entailed a new class of upper-caste urban performers appropriating the cultural practices of hereditary communities in the performing and visual arts (Soneji 2012: 4).

Sokhey regarded temple carvings as the most authentic of the available sources for recovering ancient dance movements. She was initially trained by European teachers, the most notable being British dancer Harcourt Algeranoff (1903–67),² the Russianized stage name of Harcourt Essex who had been a member of Pavlova’s company since 1921. In December 1927, Pavlova asked Algeranoff to teach Sokhey the fundamentals of ‘Hindu dancing’, and his memoirs contain a description of their first lesson. He wrote that she had ‘explained that the caste system had made it impossible for her to study in India. … I taught her some footwork, and hip movements and basic positions and movements of the arms. Gradually, she began to master the groundwork of the technique’ (Algeranoff 1957: 168).

Algeranoff probably learnt the ‘technique’ to which he alluded through collaborating with and attending the classes of Uday Shankar (1900–77). Of Bengali descent, Shankar joined Pavlova’s company on her return from a tour of India. She wanted to create dances based on authentic Indian sources so, despite his lack of formal training in either Indian or Western dance, she sought his help for the choreography of four of the dances in Oriental Impressions (1923). Pavlova and Shankar assumed the leading roles in Hindu Wedding and Radha and Krishna, while other members of her company performed Oriental Bride and Hindu Dances (Bhattacharjya 2011: 486). When Shankar left the company in 1924, Algeranoff took over his parts. He called Shankar a ‘great friend’, and when he established himself in Paris as an independent dancer, Algeranoff attended his classes. In 1928, Algeranoff (1957: 131) wrote about receiving ‘some wonderful exercises which I have found invaluable for all kinds of Oriental dancing. Whenever I learnt a new step, he accompanied me himself on the tablas, the small drum.’

To Algeranoffs’ surprise, Sokhey started to perform in March 1928 after only one course of lessons. No primary sources are available on the steps or choreography of her creations, but from an advertisement and reviews in The Bombay Chronicle, one can infer that she put on four dances, of which two had a discernible Oriental theme. She deliberately called her choreographic works nṛtya, a Sanskrit term for an expressive dance that expands a storyline (Vakil 1928: 690). She based Naga Kanya Nritya on a book called An Essence of the Dusk by British writer Francis William Bain (1863–1940). Bain, who was born and educated in England, but who had worked in colonial India for many years and wrote for a European audience, claimed that his novels were directly derived from Sanskrit sources. Although he drew on Indian folktales for some elements of his works, he became widely regarded as a writer of Oriental fantasies (Kair 2018: 27). Sokhey also danced to the lyrics of Chanson indoue, which Russian musician Rimsky-Korsakov (1912) composed and which portrayed India as an idyllic paradise: ‘Thy hidden gems are rich beyond all measure / Unnumbered are the pearls thy waters treasure / Oh wondrous land!’

While undergoing a second course of classes with Algeranoff in the summer of 1928, Sokhey arranged a joint recital in Mumbai for December of that year. Chanson indoue was omitted from the programme, but Ajanta Darshan, Naga Kanya Nritya, and Yovana Nritya, which Sokhey had choreographed, remained. The latter dance depicting the vivacity of youth during Vasanta, the spring festival, ended with a prayer to Shiva in his form of the divine cosmic dancer Naṭarāja (Vakil 1928: 691).

Algeranoff and Sokhey collaborated on three new dances. Although there are no notations of their choreography, two revivalist strategies are mentioned in Algeranoff’s (1957) memoirs. Consonant with Sokhey’s emphasis on temple sculpture, about his Abhinaya Nritya, a ‘sculptural dance’, he wrote: ‘I had some excellent books on Hindu sculpture, and began studying the plates seriously, and translating the sculptured poses into the rhythm of dance’ (Algeranoff 1957: 183). Also, at least one of his books featured illustrations of the Konark temple in eastern India, which Algeranoff used to portray several of Naṭarāja’s postures (Sokhey, 13 June 1930).

Vakil chose the themes of three more dances portraying bhakti, or devotion. In fact, with Bhakti Bhava Nritya he tried to interpret the spiritual message of India as a whole. Algeranoff (1957: 183) described bhakti as ‘the omnipresence of God: the kingdom of God is within me, it is in the skies above, in the earth beneath.’ Krishna appearing with milkmaids in the dance at the Yamuna in Panghat Nritya was very much in keeping with the traditional dance repertoire being embedded in North Indian devotionalism. However, this was not the case with the dance of Usha, the Vedic goddess of dawn, including the part when a young woman visited the temple to perform a pūjā.

From the above examination of the source materials, it is apparent that when Sokhey embarked on her dance career, she and her main collaborators were well-versed in the strategies of dance reconfiguration. She acknowledged the importance of Sanskrit treatises yet preferred temple sculpture as a source for dance movements. Nevertheless, the themes of her dances and the technique she performed were rooted in Orientalism.

Preparing for the European Stage

The dance ‘revival’ was mainly for the benefit of Indian audiences, but since Sokhey toured Europe extensively and had to meet the expectations of her European audiences, she could not wholly restrict her choreography to a nationalist agenda. Following her successful season in India, Sokhey planned to make her European debut in the United Kingdom, and British society magazines announced her forthcoming appearance as the star in Mr Cochran’s Revue, which had been enjoying considerable success throughout the 1920s.

However, when Sokhey presented theatrical manager-cum-impresario Sir Charles B. Cochran (1872–1951) with Usha, he insisted the dance be shortened, which meant leaving out the pūjā part. Sokhey refused: ‘I don’t want to produce an imitation of Ruth St Denis or anything like that and ruin all I have worked for. At least our work has the merit of being pioneer work and therefore absolutely original (Sokhey, 15 March 1930). Cochran’s response was uncompromising: ‘[I] have, with the deepest regret, come to the conclusion that the only result of allowing you to appear would be very detrimental to my production and wholly disastrous for yourself’ (Sokhey, 15 March 1930).

After Cochran’s rejection, Sokhey’s debut became a pressing matter. Since she felt a return to India would give her ‘enemies a splendid chance to disparage’ her, she became adamant about performing in Europe. She assumed that Cochran had succumbed to ‘anti-Indian propaganda’ and proposed drastic changes to her programme. She suggested adapting Rabindranath Tagore’s novel Chitra to a ballet, as it would be ‘a great attraction in Germany and on the continent’ (Sokhey, 27 March 1930). She also conceived of a programme in which the first half would consist of Indian dances, and the second half of Algeranoff and Klara Walthner (1899–c.1944), a former student of Mary Wigman, performing ‘modern plastique ballet’, along with Russian and Japanese dances. Since Algeranoff was on tour at the time and unavailable for classes, Sokhey started taking lessons in ‘danse plastique et gymnastique’ with Walthner (Sokhey, 27 March 1930).

Sokhey stayed mostly in Paris, where she saw Uday Shankar perform at a private function. On the whole, she found him ‘very limited as to imagination, and all his dances are more or less the same and they get rather monotonous’ (Sokhey, 25 December 1929). Sokhey’s husband, however, noting Shankar’s success in Vienna, Budapest, and Berlin, held a different view. In relation to Shankar’s ‘full houses’, Sahib Singh Sokhey (1930) wrote:

What seems to have most appealed to continental audiences was the utter simplicity of themes. … The peculiar charm and naturalness is bound to appeal to the post-war European who is experimenting in that everything … Indian dance does show him something that he did not think out for himself, but is full of merit.

Sahib Singh Sokhey’s preference for ‘simplicity’ was reflected in a turn to folk dance, but with a proviso in that ‘at present, the folk dances are very crudely done, and of course, if we do them, we shall have to improve and remodel them a lot’ (Sokhey 1930). Meanwhile, Leila Sokhey continued choreographing deeply religious dances. After Usha she dedicated a dance to Lakshmi, a key goddess in Hinduism as well as Vishnu’s consort. O’Shea (2007: 119) elucidates Lakshmi’s allure for revivalists by describing her as the ‘most restrained and least independent of Hindu goddesses’, for she exemplifies the qualities of high-caste women, which include respectability and restricted sexuality.

Sokhey substantially changed Bhakti Bhava Nritya to depict the sorrow of a widow seeking solace in faith. A photograph printed on the front page of De Telegraaf seems to hint that Sokhey performed an actual pūjā on stage. She is captured sitting with a white veil covering her hair. She holds a pot with a spout (kamaṇḍal) from which she pours water onto a tray (thālī) with white flowers (Anon 1931b). She apologized to Algeranoff for her change: ‘I am really sorry you are hurt. … I never felt it the way Vakil described it’ (Sokhey, 10 August 1930). She assured Algeranoff she had danced the revised Bhakti Bhava at parties with Usha and Yovana Nritya. To her astonishment, Bhakti Bhava had the most success (Sokhey, 4 July 1930). The performances for small audiences became regular: ‘I have gained a lot of courage and experience as I have danced at many soirées since I have been in Paris. Of course, I refused to dance unless they paid me well’ (Sokhey, 23 July 1930).

Sokhey eventually made her Parisian debut in 1930, with Khalil Dedashti, who had also danced in her debut in Mumbai, partnering her. The performance marked the beginning of her first European tour, which would last two years (Fig. 8.2).

Fig. 8.2

Leila Sokhey and Khalil Dedashti performing as Menaka and Nilkanta. Westerbroekpark, The Hague, 1932. (Figure caption from Allard Pierson, theatre collection, archive number 200000220.000, licensed under CC-BY 4.0)

In the publicity surrounding her performances, she presented herself as the guardian of an ancient art. For instance, in an interview with Cathy Verbeek (1931) of De Tijd, alluding to her stage name, she said that ‘dance is in a state of decay, and I have taken its rehabilitation on myself. Menaka was the priestess of the deity Indra; I want to be the priestess of Hindu dance.’

In this section, we have seen the strong influence of Western dance on Sokhey’s technique and the thematic depiction of an apolitical reality originating from Orientalist imagery on her choreography. Uday Shankar’s critical acclaim provided added inspiration for Sokhey’s works. In fact, Orientalist sources and their representation of Indian customs exerted a significant influence on the self-perceptions of Shankar, Sokhey, and Vakil.

Constructing Continuity

As mentioned earlier, a pivotal strategy for the dance reform movement was to study Sanskrit treatises. Cultural nationalists in southern India were at the forefront of a rigorous examination of texts on dance, music and dramaturgy. Sokhey partook in the discourse that celebrated a continuity between contemporary dance and its origins in antiquity.

Purkayastha (2012: 72) shows that the nationalist project had various regional manifestations. While in the northern state of Bengal it stimulated the modern arts, in southern India it forged a classical–national narrative. A critical moment was reached with the 1927 inauguration of the Madras Music Academy in the cultural capital of South India. This academy sought to promote classical dance and music by organizing recitals, and it furthered the study of art forms by establishing a library, scholarships, and an annual journal. The scholars associated with it attached huge importance to ancient Sanskrit texts on theatre and performance, and this accelerated the ‘textualization’ of dance (O’Shea 2007: 37).

In 1930, the Madras Academy stated in its journal that classical dance should accord with the tenets of the Nāṭyaśāstra. By 1932, the opinions of South Indian nationalist scholars were the most influential in national cultural circles and among many artists (Purkayastha 2012: 72). This was exemplified by an article written by Sokhey and published in Sound and Shadow, a Madras-based magazine and later republished as an appendix to Joshi’s (1989) biography. V. Raghavan (1908–79), an editor of the magazine, was better known for his contributions as an esteemed Indologist and Sanskrit scholar. Sokhey’s essay shows a change in her perspective on dance techniques. In Europe, she had studied ballet and modern dance, but now she declared that ‘well-meaning Westerners who undertake to teach us Indian dancing do not realize that their physical build is totally unsuited to do justice to our type of dancing’ (Joshi 1989: 54). Since Sokhey’s remark was aimed at ‘self-styled authorities in Indian dance’, it is unclear whether it reflects her thoughts on her training with Algeranoff and, to a lesser degree, with Klara Walthner.

Another fundamental shift occurred in the strategies she found most useful. While in 1928 Sokhey had identified temple sculptures as a prime source in the re-creation of ancient dance movements, five years later, she wrote (quoted in Joshi 1989: 57):

One cannot superimpose a mudra or hand gesture in the dance just by holding out one’s hands in the positions indicated by the paintings or sculptures. … Every mudra … should be led up to by suitable and strictly laid down rules for the movement of the hands, body, neck, eyes and feet.

Sokhey had asked ‘Pundit Vishwanath of Baidyanath’ to translate a ‘Sanskrit text’ (Joshi 1989: 54) and her subsequent essay bore the fruit of his labour in that it is interspersed with technical vocabulary to describe dance movements. She identified Lasya Nritya as an ancient genesis of Kathak, with lasya encompassing delicate, feminine movements: ‘the “Kathaka” dance was danced in ancient times by women of the highest families. Mythologically, it is attributed to Parvati, who is supposed to be its first exponent’ (Joshi 1989: 54). She offered several suggestions on movement and posture. For example, ‘“the dancer must have that magnetic look that he should be able to evoke and awaken Madan”, that is he should be able to project his personality to the audience in a way that holds them spellbound’ (Joshi 1989: 56). Interestingly, the deity Madan, also known as Kamadeva, is commonly associated with longing and desire, yet in her explanation Sokhey carefully avoided any hint of eroticism.

Sokhey did not completely discard paintings and sculpture as sources for dance. Previously, the Buddhist structures Ajanta and Amaravati had inspired her; now, she briefly referred to the Chidambaram temple in South India. The relationship with the Nāṭyaśāstra carried the most weight for her because she professed that the temple sculptures depicted the entire fifth chapter of the treatise (Joshi 1989: 56).

It is evident from Sokhey’s essay that the nationalist narrative of South India’s intelligentsia had an impact on her approach. Before her stay in Europe, she turned to temple sculpture for guidance on creating a dance vocabulary, but on her return, she relied on Sanskrit treatises.

Artistic Individuality

One discursive strategy that the nationalists employed was to construct a homogenous past in which Indian arts were embedded in ancient traditions. Sokhey dissociated dance from its court history and diminished the authority of its traditional practitioners.

When she returned to India after her first European tour, Sokhey formed a corps de ballet and started training with dance master Sitaram Prasad. While initially hesitant to learn from hereditary practitioners, in 1929 she wrote to Algeranoff: ‘tonight I am to see a so-called master of dance. He is supposed to be a marvel, but I am reserving my judgement till I have seen him. I am hoping against hope that he may be a “friend” and have something to teach us’ (Sokhey, 6 March 1929). Joshi (1989: 11) observed that Sokhey’s training with her first dance master, or guru, reversed the master–pupil relationship. Normally, a pupil would travel to the master’s house for lessons, but Sitaram Prasad moved from Calcutta to Bombay to teach Sokhey, and together they choreographed the dance-drama Krishna Leela (1934). Subsequently, she learned with Achhan Maharaj (b.1893 or 1896), with whom she created Deva Vijaya Nritya (1935), a reworking of several purāṇas on Shiva and Mohini, the female form of Vishnu. Thereafter, Sokhey was under the tutelage of Achhan’s brother Lachhu Maharaj (1901–78) (Joshi 1989: 11).

In her 1933 essay, Sokhey reverently referred to the Maharaj brothers as the ‘greatest exponents of Kathak’. Nonetheless, I would like to argue that she had reservations about their authority because, she continued, ‘the difference between these recent exponents and what I believe used to be the dance in olden times is that the dance has now become a mere demonstration of virtuosity and has lost its interpretive and artistic value through the lack of interest in the dance’ (Joshi 1989: 56). By emphasizing the physical techniques of the traditional masters, she was underlining her own significance as a female non-hereditary dancer able to elevate the dance to a superior level: ‘it needs to be moulded again into a lucid dance, to be made into an expressive and artistic whole and not allowed to stay as a mere demonstration of perfect technique’ (Joshi 1989: 56).

In a broader sense, while Sokhey claimed the Vedic origins of the dance, she eschewed its more recent history. For example, in her essay she omitted the lineage of her hereditary gurus. Achhan and Lachhu Maharaj were the sons of Kalka Prasad (d.1910), who, together with his brother Bindadin (d.1918), is credited with developing and perfecting Kathak (Walker 2014a: 104). Although their oral family history is not free of contradictions, it is established that the family earned its reputation in Lucknow, the capital of the state of Awadh (1772–1857). After the collapse of Delhi as the Mughal capital, Lucknow became a safe haven for artists. Lucknow was reputed to be North India’s foremost cultural centre in the last half century. The paramount figure behind this development was Awadh’s ruler Nawab Wajid Ali Shah (r.1847–56) (Katz 2017: 14). Walker (2014a: 106) documented the lineage of the Maharaj dance masters back to the court of the Nawab.

The musicians’ positioning in the Indian ballet’s orchestra can be interpreted as another concealment of the contributions of Islamic patronage and performers. On 6 July 1934, Sokhey’s Indian ballet gave a charity performance for Bombay’s Swadeshi League, followed a week later by a benefit concert for the Swastik League (Bombay Chronicle 1934a, b). Whereas swadeshi (‘one’s own land’) was founded to promote the production and sale of Indian goods, especially cloth (Trivedi 2007: 34–5), the Swastik League was a paramilitary group. It organized drills and prepared for communal riots by attempting to establish a voluntary, paramilitary force for Hindu ‘self-defence’ against Muslim ‘aggression’ (Casolari 2011: 133).

Two hereditary musicians made their first appearances in the city—sitarist Hamid Husain Khan (d.late 1950s) and Sakhawat Hussain Khan (1875–1955).³ The sarod player was one of the most eminent musicians of his era and a professor at Lucknow’s Marris College of Hindustani Music where he taught hundreds of students from 1927 onwards. Katz (2017) claimed that Khan belonged to a lineage of musicians held in high esteem in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Sakhawat Khan’s grandfather, Niamatullah Khan (d.1902), had been a Wajid Ali Shah court musician, while his father and uncles earned the utmost regard for their virtuosity on the sitar and sarod (Fig. 8.3). Despite Sakhawat Khan’s honourable credentials, Ambique Majumdar was the musical director of Sokhey’s company. The Bengali was roughly fifteen years Khan’s junior and graduated in 1933 from Marris college; in all likelihood he had been Khan’s student.

Fig. 8.3

The orchestra of the Menaka Ballet. From left to right: Janardhan Abhyankar, Sakhawat Hussain Khan, Sheikh Mehboob Ali, Ambique Majumdar, Kamel Ganguli, and Vishnu Shirodekar (Courtesy Allard Pierson, Theatercollectie, archiefnummer 200000220.000.)

So far, one source containing information on Majumdar has come to light. In the winter of 1937 and summer of 1938, towards the end of the Indian ballet’s European tour, he had apparently served as an expert to German musicologist Hans Engel (1894–1970). In an article for a journal of musicology, Engel wrote that Majumdar came from an affluent family of merchants, and had studied history and literature at the University of Calcutta before pursuing further studies in law. ‘His musical education began at home at the age of 15, where he had daily lessons for three years with two teachers who came into the house and was completed by studying singing for five years at the music school in Lucknow’ (Engel 1939: 227).

Engel admired the breadth of Majumdar’s knowledge and skills. Besides his extensive academic education, he was well-versed in Sanskrit works. Also, without preparation, Majumdar could sing any compositions written between the fourth and fourteenth centuries. The German scholar was amazed: ‘Vidyâpati, fourteenth century, Nada veda (Dhrupada), Kalidasa fourth century, Gitagovinda, Sanskrit poem from the eleventh century. … What a cultural asset is still alive here and, what is most important for us, sung!’ (Engel 1939: 227).

Based on Engels’ account, I would argue Majumdar and Sokhey appear to have had certain things in common. They both belonged to the Bengali elite and to the first wave of non-hereditary art practitioners and both had their music lessons in their own homes rather than having to spend lots of time in their teachers’ households.

Sokhey, who clearly challenged the traditional hierarchy between master and student in both dance and music, regarded a non-hereditary practitioner like Majumdar as best suited to compose music for dances rooted in an Oriental tradition. Hence, despite their integration with elements of Kathak, she was able to exercise her authority when shaping her own vision of Kathak.

An orchestra of six men, including Sakhawat Hussain Khan and Ambique Majumdar, accompanied Sokhey. In addition, two male dancers from the hereditary dance community, Gauri Shankar and Ramnarayan Mishra, joined Sokhey’s company for the European tour. Furthermore, three upper-caste girls whom Sokhey herself had trained—Damayanti Joshi, Vimala and Malati, the Hinduized stage names of sisters Siloo and Martina Castellino—were part of the ensemble (Joshi 1989: 11). Folklore dances, dances based on Vedic gods, and dances featuring Hindu gods comprised the first half of the programme and a ballet, either Krishna Leela or Deva Vijaya Nritya, the second.

Where the Gods Are Nigh: Dutch Reception

Menaka’s Indian ballet tour started in the Netherlands, where the company performed every evening in February 1936, before impresario Ernst Krauss subsequently programmed it for the German leg of the tour (see Schlaffke, Schwaderer and Kanhai, Chap. 12 of this volume). The Dutch and German press reviews of the performances interpreted Sokhey’s work in the context of each nation’s ideological configurations and colonial pursuits. Reviewers in the Netherlands, for example, equated Sokhey’s Indian ballet with their experience of the Dutch East Indies, albeit strongly coloured by their own colonialist imagery.

Barely twenty years before Sokhey’s first European tour in 1931/2, select Dutch audiences had become acquainted with Hindu religiosity being expressed through dance. From 1913 onwards, students from the Dutch East Indian colony would organize performances of dance, music, and drama from different parts of the archipelago. At an Indische Kunstavond, an evening featuring displays of art from the colony, Dutch visitors could now admire from up close the cherished ‘Hindu Javanese culture’ of the colony’s largest island (Cohen 2010: 106–9).

One such student—a modern dancer called Raden Mas Jodjana (1893–1972)—achieved widespread acclaim throughout Europe for combining Javanese and Indian interpretations of deities like Shiva, Vishnu, and Krishna, despite the Javanese tradition being unfamiliar with motifs such as Krishna and the milkmaids. It was his Dutch wife Elizabeth Pop (1888–1981), who had studied in London under Sufi musician Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927), who encouraged him to use Indian themes. Jodjana’s dances provided her with a means of communicating Khan’s ‘Sufi message, expressed in movements but in the Hindu–Javanese idiom’ (Cohen 2010: 119) (Fig. 8.4).

Fig. 8.4

Raden Mas Jodjana as Krishna. (Figure caption from Allard Pierson, theatre collection, object number 51xxx2517.027, licensed under CC-BY 4.0)

The first ever performance of Balinese dance in the Netherlands took place in 1931, shortly after Sokhey’s first appearance before Dutch audiences. Its Dutch commentators seeped their reviews in the imagery of the island as ‘the pearl of the colonial archipelago’.

Bali’s European settlers were instrumental in shaping the island’s image. Gregor Krause (1883–1959), a German doctor working for the Dutch colonial government, was of particular note in this respect. He was an avid photographer and his visual record in Bali: Volk, Land, Feste, Tänze, Tempel (Krause 1920) inspired his fellow countryman Walter Spies (1895–1942) to move to Bali from Java, where he had been living since 1923. Spies became a primary catalyst in establishing Bali’s image as a harmonious community in which everybody was an artist by nature—a veritable paradise on earth. Spies acted as an intermediary between Balinese artists and the Dutch government for European performances (Bloembergen 2003: 130).

The aestheticization of Bali was in alignment with the colonial politics of conservation. Dutch Orientalists had studied Bali as a treasure house of ancient Hindu–Buddhist culture. According to this image, Bali flourished because it remained Hindu, whereas the presence of Islam had caused Java to degenerate. Scholars considered Bali a fragile unity in need of protection from the inroads of modernity. Dutch colonial policy included preserving local culture and promoting Bali as a ‘living museum’ of Hindu heritage (Vickers 1989: 18, 52–3).

Relying solely on the Jodjana performances they had seen, numerous reviewers drew parallels between Sokhey’s work and Javanese dance. Some smaller-town critics, though, conceded that they had insufficient knowledge to evaluate the ballet properly. The Noord Ooster critic, for example, wrote that since it was impossible to analyse it analytically through ‘Western eyes’, the audience should merely surrender to the feelings it conveyed. ‘The Javanese dance retains its precision at every level as it alternates between the most sublime and the most lovable, with one reinforcing the other. These dancers combine awareness of the highest-imaginable and most refined cult with childlike open-mindedness, and extreme sophistication with pure innocence’ (Erenst 1936).

Several commentators provided their readers with a more precise religious interpretation. The reviewer for the Protestant newspaper De Nederlander, for instance, explained that, ‘according to the teachings of the East, everything originates from Brahma and must eventually return to him. … That evening was also an expression of the Veda. Instead of an unfoldment, it was a descent, a return to the most essential – Brahma’ (G. van R. 1936).

Having served for seven years in the infantry division of the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army, Jouke Broer Schuil (1875–1960) became a drama critic and playwright, and shared his musings in the Haarlems Dagblad on the ‘deeper meanings’ of some Indian ballets. He wondered whether before coming on stage, the members of the company would perform a ranga pujah—‘a ceremony to invoke the blessings of the angels of beauty in which those who forsake them will be ruined’. In Ramnaryan’s Sanhar Nritya, he described Shiva as ‘akin to a fire that permeates all worlds and affects life on Earth most intensely. In his dance, he creates all the planets, and rules amid an ever-moving myriad of stars. And, likewise, Krishna Leela includes a cosmic dance of the sun and the planets’ (Schuil 1936).

Leading critics in Amsterdam and The Hague tended to concentrate more on the dancers’ techniques, but Werumeus Buning (1891–1958), who had been a faithful visitor to the East Indies art evenings, was critical of how European cultures separated religion, science, politics, art and labour into distinct categories. He compared the West, which he saw as rational and insensitive, with ‘the world of dance’ in the ancient cultures of India, Egypt, and Greece, where sacred sentiments were evinced through movement, and gods were represented as dancers (Bloembergen 2003: 135). He wrote numerous reviews of Sokhey’s performances on her European tours. In 1931, for example, he wrote that ‘this Hindu dancer’ cannot match ‘the grand Javanese (dramatic) dance style’. ‘To put it bluntly’, he went on, ‘compared with Jodjana’s depictions of deities and knights, her dances are without meaning, and lack the foundation of a transmitted language of expression’ (Werumeus Buning 1931). Conversely, he praised the lyricism of her folk dances, and in her appearance in Lakshmi Darshan ‘as a celestial nymph in an Indian fairy tale she was lithe and beautiful, gesture after gesture, movement after movement, verse after verse … a grace like this needed centuries of refinement to develop and become immortal’ (Werumeus Buning 1931).

During her second European tour, Sokhey’s company put on three performances in The Hague. As the country’s capital, it was where the Ministry of Colonies and several government departments associated with colonial administration were located. It was also where colonial officials on leave resided, and private companies operating in the colony established their headquarters. The local newspaper, the Haagsche Courant, published two articles on the similarities and differences between Hindu dance and dance from the Dutch East Indies (Anon 1931a, 1936b). Although not confirmed, these articles were probably written by Ben van Eysselsteijn (1898–1973), who was the newspaper’s art critic for almost thirty-five years (Karels 2008: 109).

Van Eysselsteijn had got to know Jodjana and his fellow dancer Raden Mas Noto Soeroto through the East Indies art evenings, and they had become friends. Soeroto, who had written a biography of Tagore and translated his work into Dutch, applied Tagore’s synthesis of East and West to the Dutch East Indies. In his view, the Netherlands and West would benefit from adopting the arts and philosophy of the East, especially given that cooperation and cultural exchanges on equal terms, as opposed to unification or assimilation, advanced political development (Cohen 2010: 112; Karels 2008: 135). In fact, it was Noto Soeroto who first introduced van Eysselsteijn to Chinese philosophy and vedānta (Karels 2008: 211).

To return to the review, van Eysselsteijn observed that the public had followed Krishna Leela breathlessly and clearly with a deep understanding of the work. As he put it, ‘Hindu dance is not foreign to us Dutch; it derives its motifs from the same ancient source from which Javanese and Balinese dance draw their repertoire – the partly heroic, the partly mystical religious stories from the Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata.’ He also noted various similarities and differences between the two forms. A strong rhythm marked by the orchestra’s percussion instruments and the feet of the dancer was characteristic of both forms. Also, the dancer’s ‘head swaying softly like a flower on its stem’, the hand positions symbolizing ideas, and the ‘finger positions (mudras), which are familiar to us from Hindu and Buddhist sculpture, are equally important in Javanese dance’. He noted, however, that the ‘exuberant and bold’ style of Sokhey’s dances was very different from the ‘subdued chastity of Javanese dance, which therefore reaches a completely different level. … For those who are familiar with Javanese dance, it is the most perfect, noblest and most important dance art of the East’ (Anon 1936b).

Another writer based in The Hague expanded on van Eysselsteijn’s observations. In a letter to the editor, former military officer, painter, and dance critic Théodore van Lelyveld (1867–1954), following Coomaraswamy’s example, resorted to specialist terms to back his arguments. Observing the distinction between nṛtta, rhythmic movement devoid of meaning, nṛtya, centred emotions, and nāṭya, danced drama, van Lelyveld claimed that nāṭya was no longer practised in India, but Javanese dance was pure nāṭya, thus in strict accordance with the Nāṭyaśāstra. The Indian ballet company’s dances were called nṛtya for a reason: it was because they were the personal creations of Menaka as an individual artist. The female Javanese dancers, by contrast, are of an ‘aristocratic sensitivity and distinction that is unsurpassed in the world’ (Lelyveld 1936).

At the time of Sokhey’s debut in Europe, critics were already of the firm belief that the passage of time had so thoroughly crushed Indian dance that it could not be revived. As van Eysselsteijn explained, ‘it remains an open question which influence was greater, that of the Hindus on the Javanese or vice versa. Modern scholarship leans towards an explanation that in Java and Bali, old Hindu traditions have been preserved, stylized, and sublimated in Javanese style, which was lost among the Hindus themselves’ (Anon 1931a). Weremeus Buning (1931), on his part, resorted to poetic analogy to describe the grandeur of Javanese dance—‘Indian dance and Javanese dance germinated from the same root before it was transplanted to Java where it reached its greatest bloom.’

The author of a 1936 article in Op de hoogte magazine stated the origins of Hindu dance lay in India, and that it was from there that it spread to Thailand, Cambodia, the coastal areas of Java, and its final destination Bali. The author likened Hindu dance in its country of birth to a partly erased manuscript, a sculpture eroded by the sandstorms of time. Dance in Cambodia was in a comparatively clearer handwriting, but it had suffered imaginatively from technical virtuosity and ornamentation. In Java, however, it had reached full maturity: ‘the movement is stronger and larger, and much more a means to an end: the envisioning of divine and worldly stories’. The youngest addition to the repertoire, Balinese dance, was imbued with a natural playfulness and idyllic elegance. ‘In the dances of Menaka, the gods have ascended to distant heavens. In Bali, the gods are nigh, they walk the earth’ (Anon 1936a: 88–91) (Fig. 8.5).

Fig. 8.5

Dancer Ramnarayan Mishra. (Figure caption from Allard Pierson, theatre collection, archive number 200000220.000, licensed under CC-BY 4.0)

‘Noble Grace in the Highest Perfection’: German Reviews

The German performances took place in the wider context of the so-called synchronization (Gleichschaltung) of political, social, and cultural institutions. On assuming power, the national socialist regime prioritized identifying, excluding, and persecuting its cultural adversaries. As early as April 1933, the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service directed against civil servants of non-Aryan descent was being widely enacted in state-run theatres, orchestras, and opera houses (Kant 2003: 84). As a result, numerous musicians, actors, opera singers, and staff members were forced to retire, with Jewish employees being expelled from several of the prestigious opera houses and city theatres in which the Indian ballet was being staged (Schlaffke 2022: 135–6).

The Gleichschaltung was also extended to publishers and editors. Schwaderer (2023) shows how the freedom of journalists and art critics to express their opinions were being restricted, especially any who opposed the government. At the same time, she argues, authors were imbibed with particular images of India produced in academic and more popular publications. The onset of German colonialism gave rise to new constructions of India that countered the notion of Europe’s geopolitical unity with the British Empire at its core. Novels, translations of Buddha’s sūtras and the Ṛgveda, artefacts and travel accounts gave everyday Germans a sense of authority while at the same time perpetuated older stereotypes (Manjapra 2014: 59; Marchand 2010: 18).

The reviews tended to contain recurrent references to India as a ‘wonderland’. For example, the author of an unsigned review in the Tübinger Chronik, which had been a National Socialist Party publication since 1933, wrote of being transported to ‘some Indian village on the Ganges, or in the city of Benares’, where he could watch the natives in the ‘wonderland of India, with its thousand riddles, pagodas, temples, elephants, fakirs and priests’ (Anon 1936e).

Writing for the Rendsburg Landeszeitung, Flod (1936) described the ‘wonderland’ as ‘the district of Buddha and Brahma possessing inherited lines of centuries-old cults’. The reviewer for the Regensburger Anzeiger, however, wondered if, ‘when Gauri Shankar dances the Pavan Nritya … and lets his arms, bent in the elbow joint, whirl, is it not as if the figure of a hundred-armed Buddha had materialized before our eyes?’ (Anon 1936c).

Overall, apart from reflecting on the origins of the dances, the German press churned out lengthy reviews on various other aspects of the performances, including their music, costumes, and the public’s reaction to them. The critic for the Westfälische Neueste Nachrichten, since 1935 the NS-Volksblatt, for example, acknowledged that although Sokhey had redesigned Indian dance, it still belonged to the ancient world because of the authenticity of the Indian people’s lineage. ‘Extraordinary is the impression of the racial purity of these delicate youths and girls, heightened by the strict segregation of the caste to which they belong’ (Hav 1936). Ethnographic descriptions like these can be seen as covertly promoting Nazi ideas of ancestry, race, and exclusion (Schwaderer 2023).

Their awareness of the meaning of the Sanskrit word arya, originally associated with distinguished social standing, was apparent from the frequent appearances in their reviews of the adjective ‘noble’ (edel, vornehm, adlig) (See Hauser, Chap. 3 in this volume). Indeed, in their promotional announcements, the newspapers invariably mentioned Sokhey’s aristocratic lineage, which many reviews reiterated and which no doubt enhanced the audience’s appreciation of the dance. Martin Koegel, the critic for the Braunschweiger Allgemeiner Anzeiger, described the physical control that Sokhey and Ramnarayan, who were both of brahmin descent, exercised over their movements as ‘noble grace of the highest perfection’ (Koegel 1936). Thus, as Schlaffke, Schwaderer, and Kanhai have pointed out in this volume, the German reviews were steeped in the notion that Indian dancers were Aryans.

This was clearly related to a preoccupation in the German Indological research of the time with exploring a shared ancestry between Germans and (Ancient) Indians (see Hannemann, Chap. 10 in this volume). These claims to a common heritage enabled German citizens to distinguish themselves from the other European nations surrounding them and, moreover, to exclude their fellow Jewish citizens from the category (Schwaderer 2023).

Despite its purported Indo–Aryan origin, German culture nonetheless claimed to retain some superior qualities. For example, the Rheinische Landeszeitung critic saw no contradiction between describing Sokhey as ‘extremely noble, even majestic’, and holding ‘fundamental racial characteristics’ responsible for Indian art being tied to play and children’s games (S. 1936).

Potter (2016) states that, despite its harrowing thoroughness, the national socialist agenda did not totally control cultural productivity. She disputes, among other things, the notion of ‘aesthetic Nazification’ enforcing guidelines for acceptable and unacceptable art (Potter 2016: 9). This fits with Schlaffke’s claim that various discourses underpinned the German press reviews of the Menaka ballet (Schlaffke 2022: 111–12).

The reviewers differentiated between dances about ‘Indian folklife’ and those with mythological themes. Various reviewers regarded dances like Kreeda Nritya, which depicted girls fetching water, as genuine representations of village life, and they detailed the movements they recognized. The Meissener Tageblatt’s description of the excitement of flying a kite in Patang is exemplary. ‘One experienced the playful, industrious making of the kite, the fixing of the lines, the flying of the kite, the keeping of the lines taut, the releasing, the floating, falling and climbing of the kite’ (G. 1936).

Dances with a mythological theme, however, were appreciated very differently. The critic for the Eislebener Tageblatt echoed the views of many other newspaper reviewers when he stated that the dances of the deities Usha, Shiva, and Vayu were especially appreciated because the European audiences understood them (Anon 1936g). By contrast, the ballet Deva Vijaya Nritya prompted many critics to discuss to what extent a European audience could understand the art on display in all its depth. The Braunschweiger Allgemeiner Anzeiger reviewer remarked that, ‘at the end of the ballet, of which there were three parts, the whole house, including the director, remained seated because no one had noticed that it was over’ (Koegel 1936).

Ignorance about the ballet’s form and content were cited as the main reasons for the misunderstanding. While praise for the hand gestures was unanimous, it remained unintelligible because of its stylization and symbolism. Jacobs (1936) wrote in the Kölnische Zeitung: ‘Indian dance is certainly anything but “primitive”; its sign language has wonderful variety and subtlety, which not only reflects spiritual impulses but also has a specific content that expresses something precise, which, despite all explanations, must remain incomprehensible to us.’

The critics perceived this predominance of spirituality and mysticism as consistent with Sokhey’s narrative that she had revived the dance by connecting it to its ancient origins. A paragraph from the Geraer Zeitung (Anon 1936f) exemplifies the elusive unity of body and spirit that journalists tried to capture:

We suspect that every gesture, every movement has its own special meaning, that there is more than grace in the wonderful play of the soulful hands, that the supple body expresses spirituality, and that the minute, barely noticeable waves that surround the figures and tremble through the muscles are an expression of spiritual ideas that lie deep within these people.

In the end, Sokhey’s emphasis on basing her choreography on religion and enacting myths proved to be a barrier to full understanding.

Conclusion

Leila Sokhey-Roy celebrated her successes with European audiences as part of a movement primarily known as the Indian dance revival. Anti-colonial nationalists sought to reinvigorate a pride in the Indian arts by asserting that they had maintained contact with their roots and had preserved their original form since antiquity.

From the very beginning of her career, Sokhey pursued a revivalist agenda, as her ‘sculptural dances’ inspired by Buddhist temples and poses of Shiva show. She also interwove religious practices such as ceremonial veneration (pūjā) into dances that focused on a Hindu god or goddess and those that portrayed everyday village life. Furthermore, devotion was a central motif in dances associated with Krishna, who features strongly in North Indian religiosity.

Mastering the technical vocabulary of centuries-old Sanskrit treatises (śāstras) became a key factor in the reconfiguration of dance. Sokhey thus undertook extensive research on the terminology in the Nāṭyaśāstra, a Sanskrit compendium that nationalist scholars in South India considered important. In addition, she drew on the purāṇa genre of Indian literature for ancient myths and information on Hindu deities. Sokhey then transformed these into solos, duets, and dance ensembles, which she referred to as ‘Indian ballet’.

Sokhey’s allegiance to a lineage of hereditary dance masters associated with Lucknow reinforced her authenticity. However, since her version of Kathak history overlooked the flourishing period of dance at the Lucknow court in the nineteenth century, the Islamic benefactors of North Indian dance and music remained hidden. Moreover, by refusing to accept the traditional importance in the Indian performing arts of instructional lineage over artistic individuality, and by failing to adhere strictly to traditional techniques, she exercised her creative licence to the full. In short, she fitted the nationalist discourse to her conception of artistic dance and to her role as a female artist from a non-hereditary background.

In that the idea that traditions are unchanging and based on antiquity is rooted in British scholarship, a colonial discourse clearly permeated Sokhey’s work. As a member of the Indian nationalist elite educated in Great Britain, Sokhey internalized the intellectual legacy of Orientalism. Hence, her themes of folklore and deities reiterated European assumptions used to essentialize Indian culture. Therefore, one could attribute the predominance of Oriental dance in her work to her arduous training with European performers, her indigenous Orientalism, and her desire to achieve artistic success in Europe.

As the examination of reviews showed, onlookers invariably identified Sokhey’s Indian ballet with primordial spirituality. In the Netherlands, the audience’s appreciation of her repertoire was defined by the colonial gaze, for the Hindu–Buddhist culture of Java and Bali figured prominently in colonialist imagery. Dutch critics concurred that the ancient tradition Sokhey sought to revive had been corroded past retrieval. India might have been the cradle of Hindu dance, but it could only have reached its pinnacle in the Dutch East Indies.

Since national socialist control of cultural institutions curtailed the German critics’ freedom of expression, colonial tropes and national socialist ideology were propagated in their reviews, the latter in covert terms. The synchronization (Gleichschaltung) of the press, however, did not result in a single unified point of view. Authors differed in their appreciation of the music, costumes, and movements. For several reviewers, the sanskritized repertoire elevated the dance beyond their comprehension.