The Illuminati

All through September, Chandigarh-based Gyandev Singh, a graduate from the National School of Drama (NSD, Delhi), who is trained as an actor and director and has, over the last 15 years, built a reputation as a sensitive lighting designer, earning himself a national award along the way, was busy in the studio, sharing space, ideas and energies with two Delhi-based artists, Odissi dancer-choreographer, Arushi Mudgal and classical musician, Sudha Raghuraman. On September 30, at the Kamani auditorium, Delhi, the trio premiered Aadharam, a work commissioned by the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art.

An experimental production, Aadharam is an organic and artistic exploration of movement, music and lighting, attempting to celebrate each of their essence to find an altogether new expression where the three artists and the mediums they use to tell their stories, co-exist in a symbiotic manner.

In April 2023, following an 18-month collaboration with lighting designer, Deepa D, Delhi-based dancer-choreographer, Aranyani Bhargav, and her Vyuti Dance Company premiered The Endless Mind at Mumbai’s G5A Warehouse. This production was an abstract dance and musical exploration of 15th-century Telugu poet Annamacharya’s poem that investigates many existential questions, performed by six dancers, including Bhargav. Leading up to it, Bhargav and Deepa worked together—across cities—from the word go. Bhargav remembers long conversations over phone, and Zoom; she says she shot and shared every single rehearsal with Deepa, and all along, kept her mind open to her lighting designer’s valuable inputs in terms of how best she could bring alive complex ideas of illusion, conflict and dilemma on stage not merely using movement and music but also lights, and their treatment on stage.

In Bengaluru, taking a short break from his schedule that includes choreographic projects, performances, workshops, travels and administrative work, Kathak and contemporary dancer, Keerthi Kumar, who is also trained in Bharatanatyam, and who is a much sought-after lighting designer, talks about his most recent project with Bharatanatyam dancer-choreographer and theatre artist, Anuradha Venkatraman, Bound by Soil. A contemporary narrative that draws on the language of Bharatanatyam to tell the story of social injustice, the performance was choreographed by Venkatraman as a visual and auditory experience with movement, sound and an installation of a human represented as a parasite. Kumar admits the opportunity to light this project meant not only enhancing the story and the storytelling of the artist but also using the metaphor of light as a lament on society and to make a powerful statement with it.

This isn’t the story of how Bharatanatyam dancers across India are pushing the creative envelope; this is the story of how Indian classical dancers, across genres—those toeing the traditional format and those treading newer avenues, drawing upon their training in the classical forms—are increasingly recognising the role and importance of lights and lighting in the context of a performance. This is a story that spotlights lights and its designers who are proficient with the language of illumination—both from the technical point of view as well as the arts and aesthetics aspect of it—and bring to the production their expertise to tell the same story, better.

The rise of professional lighting artists across India, has led to the ecosystem recognising the value of lighting in the context of classical dance, elevating the experience for the art, artist and audience. It also heralds the arrival of the lighting designer as an integral part of the ensemble and has enabled a slew of dancers to also find another way to earn an income and thrive in the industry.

“I believe my role as a lighting designer,” says Deepa,who attended lighting design classes while pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Dance from the University of Minnesota, in Minneapolis, “is to really understand the dancer’s artistic vision and translate it into the language I speak, which in my case, is the language of lights.” Having trained professionally in Bharatanatyam, jazz and ballet, Deepa was always interested in how she could incorporate lighting into her choreography and direction. “But in 2010, I had to come to terms with the fact that in the world of dance, it’s really hard to make it work as a choreographer,” she says.

Equipped with theoretical knowledge and having worked in professional theatres in Minneapolis as a spot operator, light board operator, stage electrician, assistant lighting designer), combined with her choreographic vision as a dancer, lighting not only became for Deepa, a way of earning a living, but also it is in the world of lights that she found her calling.

Over the years, she has collaborated with eminent artists, traditional and contemporary, but always in a manner that her contribution is both meaningful and impactful. “I love lighting traditional Bharatanatyam margam performances as much as I enjoy working with an artist like Kathak dancer-choreographer and founder of Beej in Mumbai, Sanjukta Wagh, for instance, who considers the lighting designer, an essential part of their band in a way that my lights and I are playing, performing and breathing together, alongside her and all the other artists, on stage.”

Unlike Deepa, Gyandev Singh didn’t train as a dancer but recalls being exposed to dance as a child, thanks to his parents who knew leading dancers such as Navtej Johar, who Singh considers a mentor of sorts. “Having said that, I think my understanding of dance is intuitive,” he says, recalling early days of working with Kathak and contemporary artist, Aditi Mangaldas and Leela Samson, with whom he toured abroad extensively in the early years of his career, meeting with a slew of international lighting designers who enabled his style of lighting design to take shape. “With every single dancer I have worked with so far, I have come on board always as a collaborator,” Singh says, “This means you are equally invested in the project right from the start. You see, when you work like that, in a way that is organic and holistic, ideas take shape slowly and in a manner that is collaborative; that for me, is the beauty of a creative endeavour.”

At a recent workshop titled Insight into Stage Lighting that Singh toured with to three cities—Chennai, Bengaluru and Mumbai—he reiterated his philosophy towards lighting and its design. “I feel it is crucial tha0t lighting designers don’t think of themselves merely as those who understand the technical aspects of lights but consider themselves as artists. I’m, for instance, particularly interested in seeing the colour and shape of the light/s and see how it affects the human body. My approach is not merely about using lights to create mood, context and atmosphere for the dance but also it is about creating perception and exploring how audiences are viewing characters.”

While some designers learned on the job, others have studied lighting design too. Kumar studied stage and lighting design in the year-long diploma course on Kathak, with a certification in choreography, that he pursued at the Natya Institute of Kathak and Choreography, founded by Kathak exponent, Maya Rao, and helmed by her daughter and Kathak and contemporary artist, Madhu Nataraj. “For us, as students,” Kumar says, “lighting in the context of a performance always occupied pride of place. There is no taking away that lighting design is gaining steam in today’s context but our grand guru, Maya Rao incorporated lighting design into every production she envisaged way back in the day.”

In her grand ballet, Hoysala Vaibhava, that she presented in 2001, there is a scene in the temples of Chalukya where each dancer who is portraying a sculpture, comes to life one after another, lit, first by a silhouette before coming into full light. “Maya didi had the foresight to recognise that lighting had the ability to enhance the choreography and all her productions were built keeping lighting as an important embellishment, an essential even.”

Bengaluru-based dancer-choreographer and lighting designer, Surya Rao says he learnt the basics of lighting design as part of his choreography course at Natya Institute of Kathak and Choreography, and began appreciating its nuances, over time, on the job. “For some strange reason, sometime between the 1980s and early 2000, mainstream dancers seem to have ignored lighting as part of their ensemble,” Rao says, “Perhaps they couldn’t afford hiring professionals or the infrastructure didn’t support their vision.”

Niranjan Gokhale, a lighting designer who divides his time between Pune and Bengaluru and holds a Master’s Degree in Fine Arts with a specialisation in lighting design from the University of Georgia, US, adds to Rao’s statement, “I have to say there is an eagerness and a sense of curiosity amongst the newer generation of dancers — the ones in their 15th or 16th year of performance — who are discovering the possibilities of the visual medium, the visual language and how it can connect with their storytelling,” says Gokhale.

While pursuing an acting career, Gokhale had an epiphany, so to speak; he discovered his love for lights and the magic of lighting while assisting one of his lighting teachers. “I was intrigued and I was keen to understand this language and see how I can make it work for an art form,” says Gokhale who has spent more than 15 years in the industry, lighting up solo and ensemble artists.

Having spent quality time with the Attakkalari Centre for Performing Arts in Bengaluru, his exposure to contemporary dance, ballet and classical elements helps him bring a nuanced perspective to lighting even for Indian classical dance. “The sidelights, for example,” he says, “are not as common in Bharatanatyam, but I try and bring them to add a new perspective to the performance.”

In the last decade, the inclusion of lighting and its design as an integral component to move a story forward, has also seen the birth of interesting and experimental works of art that have relied equally on aspects like costume, lighting, stage design, et al, to push the creative envelope and raise the overall artistic experience.

Take Ravana: The Untold Story of the 11th Head for instance. This is a solo production that was conceived by Rao but came alive with creative inputs from his friend, and long-time collaborator, Keerthi Kumar. This 50-minute monologue of sorts draws us into the less-depicted aspects of Ravana’s complex persona.

“As a choreographer who also understands lights, I found I was thinking simultaneously on both the movement and the lighting; as a result, the two are inextricably linked and complement each other, dramatically in this work.” Ravana premiered on September 29 at the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre, Mumbai.

In Chennai, lighting designer and creator of Black Box Media in Chennai and Bengaluru, B Charles agrees that classical dancers are roping in lighting professionals to elevate their performance no doubt, but things have changed. “Honestly, I was touring abroad way more between 2010 and 2018, but post-pandemic and with a lot of dancers also turning into lighting designers, the demand for professionals, especially on tours abroad, has considerably come down.”

As we speak, Charles’ Instagram is buzzing with stories as he is all set to light up Odissi dancer-choreographer Sharmila Mukherjee’s adaptation of Black Swan titled Hansika. Charles studied the principles of lighting design at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland and worked closely with Chennai-based theatre artist and lights artist, Mitran Devanesan.

With a distinct style of his own, and bringing to the floor, his theoretical expertise and imagination, Charles likes the interplay between traditional and newer lights and how they can create for the audience, a larger-than-life experience.

And this experience is imperative for a performance, says Kathak and contemporary exponent, Aditi Mangaldas, who is unarguably responsible equally for paving the way for an uncompromising artistic experience and for raising the bar, one production after another. “If you look at where Kathak came from,” she says, “there was an inherent aesthetic packed into it; it has journeyed from the temple to the Mughal court to the
proscenium stage, but how does one re-create the ambience of the temple and the court that is in-built into the very ambience of the art form itself onto stage? You rely on professionals who can create an entire palette of colours, who can play with the texture of light, who can allow you to feel emotions through the construction of an ambience.”

While creating work, she says she makes a little box into which she keeps adding her thoughts; a photo where she likes the colour of the light, an image, a beautiful painting that she saw at a museum, and then she brings on board a professional. She says, “I’m open to the fact that they have the ability and the vision to translate the ideas in my head, and in the box, to create the emotion I am looking for, on stage, through the language they know best. This vulnerability that a professional knows best about what they are doing is also an important quality to cultivate as an artist.”

It is this jugalbandi between the dancer and the lighting designer that is elevating Indian dance, one production at a time.

Aayanaclassical dancedanceKeerthi KumarKumoudini LakhiaLighting designersMythili Prakash