Fifty-nine years ago this week, Kilbourn Hall was the venue for a University of Rochester guest appearance by the world-renowned South Indian dancer Tanjore Balasaraswati.  Balasaraswati (1918-1984), professionally known by her surname alone, gave two performances on the afternoon and evening of Tuesday November 2^nd, 1965.  Her appearance at the University of Rochester was jointly sponsored by the University’s South Asia Language and Area Center and the India Association of Rochester, in cooperation with The American Society for Eastern Arts.  The extensive printed program (displayed here) offers a substantive biographical sketch and also explains the roles of the assisting artists in the performances.  The program also provides detailed dramatic and narrative information to accompany the various dances.  While Balasaraswati had enjoyed a thriving career at home in India, her international career was newly established at this point in the 1960s; her first visit to the USA had been in 1962.

A seventh-generation performer from a family of performers, Balasaraswati was born in Madras and later died there (today the city is known as Chennai).  She was a leading exponent of bharata natyam (frequently spelled as one word), one of the classical Indian dances that unites song and dance, incorporating Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, and Jain elements.  In the years following India’s independence from British rule in 1947, the bharata natyam tradition has been carried throughout the world; it is now taught in many countries, including the USA.  There is much regarding Balasaraswati’s life and work that can be accessed online, including an upload of the documentary Bala (1976) by Satyajit Ray, as well as numerous video clips from performances. Her biography was written by her son-in-law, relying largely on primary sources that had been retained by her family.^[1]  In addition, her work in the context of the bharata natyam tradition has been addressed in scholarship.^[2]

Balasaraswati’s UR engagement in Kilbourn Hall was highly significant in that it represented exposure to the Rochester audience of the work of a major non-Western performing artist.  At this time such an interest held no permanent curricular place at the Eastman School; it would be another 15 years before ethnomusicology would be established in the Eastman School curriculum with the appointment of Dr. Ellen Koskoff.

[1]  Balasaraswati: Her Art & Life by Douglas M. Knight, Jr. (Wesleyan University Press, c2010).

[2]  Publications include the monograph Dancing Bodies of Devotion: Fluid Gestures in Bharata Natyam by Katherine C. Zubo (Lexington Books, c2014).