Devadasi

I took this picture of a French Bharatanatyam dancer at Mahabalipuram in 1975. I have posted two other pictures of her, here and here:

She came to Madras to learn Bharatanatyam and assumed the name Menaka, as probably the ultimate among all the mythological seductresses.  But her real name, she 'divulged' to but a few locals, was Verushka, and she claimed to be a Russian princess. (Because of her imperial bearing, real or put-on, only some of her contemporary dancers from France especially, and Europe generally, know the real story, but in Chennai and in Delhi, I have known her to be taken very seriously, and her arangetram was performed at no less than the Chidambaram Palace at Chidambaram.)  The then French Ambassador to India came to Madras, Pondicherry and Chidambaram to see her perform.

Upon her unrelenting persistence, I took pictures for her publicity brochures for performances in Paris and other European cities, despite my sense of inexperience in taking pictures of temples, but more especially, of people at long distances.

Her pose and the setting reminded me of the Devadasis ("servants of god"), traditional temple dancers who were supposed to be serving the gods' sexual needs, but in reality ended up serving the needs of the temple priests and influential visitors to the temple. The Devadasi system was outlawed in India in 1988, so the tradition and its practitioners have almost completely disappeared.

For more information about the Devadasis, see the links below:

The blog of Dr. Avanthi Meduri, a scholar of subaltern studies, the Devadasi system and a practitioner of Indian classical dance, a friend who spent prime time with us while in Madras, at the time when she was teaching at a university at Chicago; she is currently at the University of Roehampton in UK.)

Wikipedia

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