From The Tablet, 17 June 2006
Saju George is a Jesuit priest and bharatanatyam performer, who integrates Indian classical dance with Catholic spirituality.
Even as a child Saju George loved to dance and he was endlessly fascinated by the folk dances his schoolmates performed at Hindu festivals. He himself comes from a community in Kerala, which has deep Christian roots. They’re the St Thomas Catholics, so-called because they trace their history right back to the first century. (According to tradition, the Apostle Thomas left Jerusalem after Pentecost, eventually evangelising the people of India’s Malabar Coast). As a young man, Fr Saju joined the Jesuits where, inspired by Mother Teresa, he hoped to work as a missionary with India’s poorest people. Not for a moment did he imagine his eventual life as both priest and dancer. However his superiors had different plans.
When he performed at concerts in the seminary, his dancing gift was strikingly obvious. He was 22 when his superior suggested that he should study dance more formally. He began to immerse himself in India’s great traditions of classical dance, initially kuchipudi and later bharatanatyam, the form we know best in the West. A guru even visited the seminary to give him daily lessons. “I had not expressed myself strongly about a wish to dance”, Fr Saju told me. “Instead it was a blessing from my superior. All my superiors – my provincial and my rectors – were artistically sensitive to the beauty of dance, music and theatre. They saw that I had the talent to ‘go for it’. My call to dance is a call within the fundamental call to priesthood. While most of the time, I dance and teach dance, I am very much a priest ”
The first thing that strikes you about him is his costume, which he designed himself; necklaces, waist and ankle belts of gold plate temple jewellery; and a silk costume, a man’s sari, or dhoti, with pleats. The jewellery looks heavy and I wondered if its weight made it difficult to move. Not so, Fr Saju says. In any case, bharatanatyam (in contrast with western classical dance which emphasises ethereality and escape from gravity) is very earthed with a fast flickering quality. It uses the ground and is heavily percussive and rhythmic, driving into the base of the body before moving upwards and outwards. Mime and acting are integral to the dance, and facial expressions and highly stylised hand gestures are highly important. A performer explores the finest nuances of dramatic mood, winding together elements of pure dance with a fervour rooted in the everyday.
Bharatanatyam is a Hindu temple art. Historically it was performed by devadasis, (in Sanskrit, ‘servants of God’), women temple dancers. Its fundamental motivation is praise and worship of God. Over time the devadasis became little more than prostitutes and the practice was abolished in 1947. This freed Indian religious dance to reassert its fundamental value. As temple dancers brought their art to the proscenium theatre, high caste people began to study it, and increasing numbers of men became interested. As Fr Saju explained, “it underwent a spiritual reinvigoration. Its spiritual content was brought out – and seen not as vulgar and associated with prostitution.”
How does Saju George integrate a traditionally Hindu religious practice with a Catholic spirituality? His answer is that a Christian subjectivity transforms it. “You have to go through a rigorous training – physical and mental. The form of dance involves a commitment of the whole person, body and soul. Everything that is danced is in praise of God. God may be Shiva, or Krishna – or one of the other gods of the Hindu tradition. But the underlying spirituality is lifting one’s soul towards God. The dance lifts the soul. There is a sacredness and spirituality in it. It becomes a prayer. It’s like a Yoga, which takes years of commitment, and it has its own deep philosophy. As a Catholic I found that the dance may be in its traditional roots Hindu, but that it had the potential to express a Catholic commitment to Jesus through our own psalms; to make the spirit of the Bible alive in dance and movement. Expressing psalms through this form really captures me. Our hymns can be danced. We have choreographed biblical themes – and it is a different way of preaching and evangelising and sharing with others how the whole person can be involved in prayer and worship, through body-gestures, singing, acting.”
Fr Saju visits Britain later this month. To the accompaniment of Karnatic music, the classical form of South India, with its ragas and talas, he will dance at the Parish Mass at St Catherine’s, Bristol Street, Birmingham on Sunday 25 June. As well as performing in Birmingham, Liverpool, Gillingham, Leicester and London, he will also be at the London’s Jesuit Centre in Mount Street on Wednesday 28th. At the Mass in St Catherine’s there will be a dance of self-offering; a Gospel meditation; and a thanksgiving dance, or keerthanam after Communion. At a recent Eucharist, his danced reflection on the Paschal mystery lasted for 22 minutes. “When you bring these dances to the West”, he told me, “you need to explain certain things. The symbolic system is different. I found people are quite open to it.” In his native India no explanation is necessary. In 1989 he danced the offertory prayer at Pope John Paul’s Mass in Delhi. It had a powerful impact on those who saw it.
Saju George belongs in a long tradition of dancing Jesuits, and it is one from which he takes encouragement. In Europe, French and German Jesuits staged baroque ballets with religious themes in the seventeenth century. It was even conventional wisdom among Parisians of the day that no one could pirouette as well as a Jesuit. Among today’s Jesuits, Saju George is not alone; there are Jesuit priest/dancers in Europe and North America. What binds Fr George and his fellow Jesuit performers is their common instinct that dance has a rightful place among the sacred arts.
For further details: http://www.soulutions.co.uk/kalaikaviri/saju.htm
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