Last week Rebecca Loukes and I went to Dartington to see the ‘Dancing in Utopia’ exhibition of photographs from the 1930s (named for Larraine Nicholas’ 2007 book of this title, I think). Many of these show dance performances taking place out of doors. The photo within the photo below shows Charles E Brown’s image of students of the Jooss-Leeder school rehearsing in the open air theatre with Sigurd Leeder, c.1935. There are others of Margaret Barr and the Jooss ballet.
Sadly for Rebecca, there were no photographs of Gertrude Falke-Heller, who taught students the techniques of Elsa Gindler. Rebecca has written about both of these in her book, Radical Sensing and Performer Training (2025). Falke-Heller’s absence only tends to confirm Rebecca’s argument that women’s training techniques are often passed down through embodied practice rather than through documentation, written or otherwise.
I was particularly interested in the photographs of Uday Shankar, who performed and led workshops at Dartington in the mid 1930s:
At nine o'clock one night in May 1934, bonfires blazed in the open-air theatre behind the Great Hall. By their light, 'Uday Shankar and his Company of Hindu Musicians and Dancers' performed to a large, fascinated audience. (Nicholas 2007:93).
Nicholas is right in suggesting that in this earlier work, Shankar played up to ideas of being ‘authentically’ Indian in a way that was readable to his European audience and therefore complicit with orientalist ideas of India. However, his lack of training in ‘classical’ dance styles does not make his work inauthentic, as has been discussed by many, including, for example, Prarthana Purkayastha (2014). Purkayastha discusses his later work in India, where his style matured to combine free movement with a recognisable Indian dance vocabulary. Although side-lined by those who considered a restoration of ‘classical dance’ intrinsic to a nationalist project, in effect that work of historical recuperation was no more ‘authentic’ than his, despite being ‘legitimised by textual theory’ (Purkayastha 2014: 63-4). The restoration of Sadir dance practices was in part a reimagination of them. Meanwhile:
For Shankar, there could not exist a singular and exclusive reality of the performing arts in India dependent on the largely reconstructed classical models of performance. There were other realities too; other methods, other approaches and other pathways to the creation of dance works. (Purkayastha 2014:62).
The Elmhirsts had an enduring relationship with India and Indian artists, through their close connection with Rabindranath Tagore, whose work at Shantiniketan was deeply influential to them. Shankar’s own school in Almora was supported by the Elmhirsts, and they hosted other Indian dancers and musicians later in the century (e.g. sitarist Ravi Shankar,* dancer Shanta Rao and others). At Almora, Shankar moved away from mythological to modern, realist themes, with work making critical commentary on modern India. Primarily for practical reasons, the centre closed in 1944, as Shankar chose instead to work on his film, Kalpana, which, in part, preserves his legacy. His dance style was also passed on through the work of his wife, Amala Shankar, collaborator on the film, and founder of her own school in 1965 (Munsi 2023). I guess this brings us back to Rebecca’s writing, on the passing down of legacy through the bodies of women.
*Uday’s younger brother, who danced and played in the earlier visit (Nicholas 2007:94).
Loukes, Rebecca (2025) Radical Sensing and Performer Training. London: Routledge.
Munsi, Urmimala Sakar (2023). ‘From the Stage to the Next Stage: Transitioning from a learner to a teacher–Amala Shankar’s journey’. In Burridge and Nielson Dance On! (pp. 164-175). London: Routledge.
Nicholas, Larraine (2007), Dancing in Utopia: Dartington Hall and its Dancers. Alton: Dance Books.
Purkayastha, Prarthana (2014). ‘Uday Shankar and the Performance of Alterity in Indian Dance.’ In Indian Modern Dance, Feminism and Transnationalism (pp. 50-78). London: Palgrave Macmillan UK.