Dances of Hindustan

When a Hindu wants attention, he beats on a gong. To drive away evil luck, he blows a bleating blast on a sankha, an instrument shaped like a big ocarina. Last week, in Manhattan's tiny Carnegie Chamber Music Hall, there was both gong-beating and sankha-blowing. The occasion was an evening of Hindu dances, put on by two Hindus, Bhupesh Guha and Sushila, who live, teach and foster their dance troupe in the backwaters of Manhattan.

While turbaned musicians, sitting cross-legged on the floor, thumped on queer-shaped drums with fingers, palms and sticks, clinked tiny cymbals and strummed the twangy, long-necked tambura, a flute spun its single thread of melody. In the traditional Indian dance-forms, the dancers moved hands, arms, shoulders, necks, more purposively than their feet. Lithe, hollow-cheeked Bhupesh Guha became the god of spring, his fluttering hand a bee alighting on a flower to drink honey. Willowy Sushila was the lotus-born Lakshmi, placing buds at the feet of Vishnu, her arms and hands moving with the deliberate grace of a cobra. Bhupesh Guha became a hunter with tasseled spear, stalking the tiger, wary, fleet, then charging in for the kill. His frenzied ritual dance around the slain animal, joined by three women, was a bolero of stabbing rhythm.

Many Westerners have made the long journey to India to study the mysteries of natya (ancient laws and rules of Hindu drama and dance). Dancers Guha and Sushila did the opposite. Hindus themselves, they were both in the U.S. when they decided to devote themselves to the infinite hours of study that natya demands. Guha's father, a district mayor and judge in India, had sent him to Germany to study engineering. He had finished his studies in the U.S., was installing refrigeration equipment in Waynesboro, Pa. Sushila (she uses no last name) was sent by her mining-engineer father to Columbia University's School of Journalism, but became Guha's partner seven years ago.

Bhupesh Guha & Sushila did not put on such a show as to erase memories of the great Uday Shan-Kar (now running his culture center in India), but their dance program provided a rare opportunity to see real Hindus doing real Hindu dances.

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