Brown Dancers

As always when Dancer Uday Shankar of India returns to New York, a capacity house turned out last week to watch and hear the dances he has constructed during his absence. This time his new offering most favored was a temple dance called Tandrava Nrittya. Shankar became the God Shiva, whirling and gesturing, creating the universe only to destroy it. When his wife died, Shiva fell into grief and a state of meditation. Reincarnated as Parvati, she tried to wake him. When the Elephant-Demon, Gajasura, menaced her, Shiva, awake at last, came to Parvati's defense. In the great fight that followed, the god and the demon threw winds and lightning at each other, the forces of Earth, Air and Sky. Even Shiva's arms which are serpents, did not avail him. Finally in desperation he struck the demon with the club Vishnu had given him, and won the fight.

The audience, impressed with Shankar's sinuous Shiva, and with the elaborate suppleness of Shankar's French girl, Simkie (only Occidental in the cast), marveled also at the Elephant-Demon as danced by a 21-year-old stripling named Madhavan. Young Madhavan has studied dancing in India since he was 12. This is his first trip to the U. S., his first season with Shankar who considers him a better dancer than himself. Critics, mindful of the subtlety of the older dancer, his hands which can all but hiss like snakes, disagree. But they praise Madhavan for his energy, his strong, fluid movements, the ease with which he holds himself in desperately hard positions.

Shankar plans a short U. S. tour this season, a long one in 1938. After that he hopes to open an All-India Centre of Hindu Arts in Benares, backed by rich connoisseurs like Mrs. Leonard Elmhirst.

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