Creating a Future for Kathak: Colonialism, Culture, and an Artist’s Life
Los Angeles-based kathak company Leela Dance Collective recently created the Leela Foundation, the first endowment fund dedicated exclusively to kathak dance and Hindustani classical music in the United States. Here Leela Co-Founder & Co-Artistic Director Rukhmani Mehta shares the journey to this feat – personal, historical, and cultural.
An Artist’s Life: My Story
I was at a dinner party with a group of friends when I casually mentioned that I wanted to pursue dance full-time. I was enrolled in UC Berkeley’s Masters in Public Health program at the time and had been studying kathak dance with my guru, Pandit Chitresh Das, for about six years. The declaration stunned my friends and someone retorted, “How is that financially possible?” I was quick to answer, “Well, I’m going to get married first and then my husband will support me as I pursue dance.”
Throughout my 20s and early 30s, I pursued the standard path laid out for most young South Asian American women. I graduated from college, pursued a degree in higher education, and embarked on a career that was economically viable and socially sanctioned. I ardently pursued my passion ‘on the side’ while doing all of this. By my late twenties, I was working full-time in public health, dancing in my guru-ji’s professional company —the Chitresh Das Dance Company —and teaching at his school. I was living two lives. One was the life I was supposed to live and the other my heart and soul yearned for. I desperately wanted to pursue dance as my life path and saw marriage as the only way to make this happen.
Looking to marriage as a means to an artist’s life may seem outdated, but it was (and is) a reality. I knew many artists who could focus on their dance careers only because they were supported by a partner. It remains true for many artists today. At the time, I had very few examples of kathak dance artists or classical Hindustani musicians who were able to maintain a full-time career as an artist. The U.S. only had one Kathak touring company (as it does today). While I knew and know of so many incredibly talented women, the only kathak artists who had achieved widespread artistic recognition and respect in the U.S. were men.
My rich husband never did show up and I eventually became exhausted and burnt out from living two lives. My career in public health was becoming more demanding as my dance practice was deepening and expanding. At 33, I made the decision to quit my job, move back in with my parents, and try to make a life and a career as a dancer.
The first few years of the endeavor were brutally hard. I had no plan and had to weather the disappointment and worry of my parents as well as judgment and criticism from my friends and community. My financial reality changed overnight; I was living off of my savings, without health insurance, and counting my pennies. I started teaching Kathak. I learned how to write grants. It took three years but somehow, I persevered and landed on a stable footing —at least enough to continue on. I had built a small base of students and started receiving a few grants to support this educational and culture-preserving work.
In 2016, I founded Leela Dance Collective with Seibi Lee and Rachna Nivas with the hope of creating a new future for Kathak while preserving the art form.
Throughout this journey, I have often thought to myself, why is this so hard? What is so wrong about wanting to pursue Indian classical dance as a career and life path? Many professional dancers struggle to make ends meet as they pursue their passion, but this path felt particularly challenging. The art form is so rich and profound, vital to Indian culture and consciousness, and has so much to offer the world. I don’t understand the dissonance between these truths.
India: Culture & Colonialism
As I dug into these questions, I began to understand that the Kathak dance is situated squarely within the context of colonialism, patriarchy, and poverty. Over the course of two hundred years, the British purged India of its wealth and natural resources, destroyed its cultural institutions, branded Indian culture as backward, and instigated division amongst its people. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the British ran an anti-nautch campaign (“nautch” = dance), banning public performances of kathak dance, and labeling the art form sexual and promiscuous. Patronage for the form came to a halt under increasing stigma and political pressure and the livelihoods and lives of kathak dancers and artists were destroyed. Decades later, after India’s independence in 1947, kathak dance —along with other Indian art forms — re-emerged as a source of national identity and pride. But the cultural damage was deep. This was also in the political and economic context of the newborn nation trying to rebuild itself while grappling with internal division and discord and an 80% poverty rate.
My family’s history is a part of the colonial history and legacy of India; it is a story I see mirrored throughout the Indian-American community. My grandmother lived in colonial India. I remember her stories about Gandhi-ji’s Salt March and India’s partition. My dad was born at the dawn of India’s independence. He was a part of the first generation of Indians living in free, independent India. Colonialism and poverty shaped their lives and their consciousness. It was this generation that had to find a way out of poverty for themselves and their families. For my dad, education was his ticket to a better future. He studied, worked hard, and landed in the United States as a master’s student in the 1960s, not long after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 which opened the U.S. borders to Asians. This first generation of Indian immigrants paved the way for today’s growing and thriving Indian-American community across the United States.
Today, Indian-Americans are largely perceived to be educationally and economically successful and relatively well assimilated. Indian food (from samosas to curries), yoga, Bollywood music and dance, and Indian fashion have found their way into mainstream consciousness. Taking it all in —the number of Indian restaurants in a city like Los Angeles, the yoga studios on every corner, the number of Indian and Indian-American dramas and shows on Netflix —it seems like the story of India and Indians is one of victory in the face of colonialism. Despite this seeming success, the consciousness and reality of modern-day Indian Americans are profoundly shaped by the history and legacy of British colonialism in India.
A Path Forward
As I zoom out and think about this historical context, it is no wonder there is no institutional support for Kathak dance. There are no grants, fellowships, or residencies designed for Kathak artists. There are only a handful of platforms for kathak performances and they are typically hosted by passionate patrons in private homes or small venues. Compensation for artists is rarely, if ever, included. There are no scholarships for students of Kathak dance.
It’s a miracle that the art form is still alive, albeit in these niche and siloed spaces. It is largely due to many passionate individuals who have taken on the task of advancing kathak dance and Hindustani classical music. Artists are teaching out of their homes and performing on any platform they can get for little or no compensation; students pursue their study of music and dance with profound dedication while tending to their day jobs; and patrons host concerts in their homes and personally sponsor festivals and performances.
At the same time, it’s tragic to watch the tradition become distorted, diluted, and lost as master artists pass away without being able to create an artistic legacy, talented students give up the form because of financial and social pressures and artistic integrity and knowledge give way to commercialization. This is what happens to an art form without proper support and infrastructure.
After living with the reality of trying to be a kathak dancer against this historical and cultural backdrop for decades, I felt frustrated, tired, and angry. Eventually, these emotions led to a desire to do something constructive and be a part of the solution. That’s why Leela Dance Collective established the Leela Foundation, the first U.S.-based endowment for kathak dance and Hindustani classical music. The fund supports kathak dance artists and musicians through direct financial support and fellowships. In 2023 we hit our first major milestone, having raised $1 Million through large and small donations from around the country. This is small in the Western world of philanthropy but huge in our community.
Through the long-term growth of the Leela Foundation, I hope to provide vital and tangible support to kathak dancers and Hindustani classical musicians working to preserve and advance India’s artistic heritage. I want young dancers to know that a professional career as a Kathak artist is possible. I dream that there are kathak dancers, artists, and students in abundance working and thriving as they carry forward the art form. My dream is that kathak dance is a part of the fabric of our world — enlivening and enriching communities and society as a whole. I dream that there comes a day when kathak dancers can say “I’m going to get a full-time job” as opposed to “I’m going to get married” to make a career in kathak dance viable.
Photos by Steven Roby, Margo Moritz, and Marissa Rosseillier
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rukhmani Mehta brings a singular voice and vision to the art form of kathak, classical dance of North India. She is a senior disciple of the legendary kathak master, Pt. Chitresh Das, and was a principal dancer in his company, the Chitresh Das Dance Company, for over a decade before founding Leela Dance Collective with Seibi Lee and Rachna Nivas in 2016. As Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director of Leela Dance Collective, Mehta has created numerous original works that bring kathak dance to contemporary audiences. These works include SPEAK, a kathak-tap collaboration; Son of the Wind, a dance drama based on India’s epic, the Ramayana; and Encounters with Beauty, a collaboration between kathak and contemporary chamber music. She has performed at prestigious venues across the U.S. and India such as NC State Live, The Broad Stage, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, Green Music Center, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, National Centre for Performing Arts Mumbai, and more. Her artistic works have been funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, New Music USA, California Arts Council, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, Zellerbach Family Foundation, and more. She has received the ACTA Apprenticeship Grant and has been twice nominated for an Isadora Duncan Dance Award. Mehta is also Artistic Director of Leela Youth Dance Company, a pre-professional performing group that empowers young women to develop their voices and be artists and leaders.
