Mumbai/Pune: Gautami Patil took Kolepwadi village in Ahmednagar district by storm in her white sari and pink fuchsia blouse. The crowd went wild. She moved sinuously, waved to the audience, blew kisses at them and fended off exuberant male members of the audience with ease as she danced to a Lavani song, Chandra, from the 2022 Marathi film Chandramukhi. But there was very little in her performance in March that recalled the traditional Lavani, a Maharashtrian folk and dance performance. The song wasn’t sung live, but blared through the sub-woofers of the DJ console.
Patil’s Lavani performances break the traditional mould, but it has landed her in the centre of a political and cultural storm. Having indirectly drawn the ire of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Ajit Pawar, the Maratha community coordinator Rajendra Jarad Patil, as well as top Lavani dancer Megha Ghadge for distorting the original folk dance, the 25-year-old internet sensation from Dhule no longer identifies herself as a Lavani dancer; She simply calls herself a “performer”.
“I am not a Lavani dancer. My performance is a DJ show,” she declares, clad in a salwar kameez of somber hues, its border adorned with a strip of glimmering sequins. She wears no make-up and has her long hair firmly clasped at the back.
“There are only a couple of Lavani songs. The rest of the songs I perform on are Marathi and Hindi songs. But I am not predominantly a Lavani performer,” she reiterates firmly.
The Lavani dance, which is intrinsic to Maharashtra, is known for its combination of bold strokes and delicate moves, performed in a traditional nine-yard saree and ghungroos to the sound of dholkis before a live, mostly indoor audience. The ‘Sringari Lavani’, which Patil performs, is one of the most popular subgenres of the dance form, with its sensual, teasing lyrics.
She chooses famous Marathi songs, and her performances, at times, have shock appeal. For instance, she has poured water on herself in the middle of a performance, flipped her hair back and forth, exchanged air kisses and winks with audience members and jumped around on the stage with children. The organisers often introduce her as Sabse Katil, Gautami Patil.
But the purveyors and protectors of Maharashtra’s culture accuse performers like Patil of doing nothing to uplift the art of Lavani. In February this year, Pawar instructed party workers to refrain from organising “vulgar and obscene” performances in the name of folk art after Ghadke, also an NCP member, complained about Lavani being reduced to item numbers by performers like Patil.
“These girls are dancing without proper attire. This is a folk dance, and it needs to be respected. Are only social media stars considered true Lavani performers now? We have also worked in the past but haven’t resorted to vulgarity,” says Ghadge, without directly naming Patil.
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‘Sabse katil, Gautami Patil’
In her March performance, a young man from the audience expressed his desire to climb on the stage and dance with Patil. She politely stopped him, offering a handshake instead, and moved on to her signature song, Sarkar.
Patil insists that her dance should not be seen as vulgar. “If that was the case, why would we see so many women and children in the front row? They dance with me on these songs. How would they be so comfortable if the show was not family oriented?”
Lavani’s nauvari saree look is incomplete without hair tied in a bun and adorned with a gajra (flower garland). Heavy ornaments, waistbands, make-up, a round or crescent bindi and a Maharashtrian nath (nose ornament) complete the glitzy outfit.
But Patil has her own signature style, and says that she has “revolutionised” the traditional Lavani garb.
She used to keep her hair loose earlier, but after being called out for it by fellow Lavani dancers, she ties them in a bun with the required gajra. Her sarees, however, are neither silk nor sport traditional thick borders and Paithani designs; they are made of chiffon and other synthetic material, with ruffles, mirrors, beads, and sequins. The folds hug her body, highlighting her slender frame.
Patil has an innate and instinctive understanding of what it takes to be a star on stage and social media. Just last month, she posted a video on Instagram where she thrusts her chest to the beats of a Marathi song in an electric blue saree with a chunky kamarbandh (waistband).
But the distinctive factor in this video is a little girl who cries to join Patil on stage. She gladly obliges, dancing away as the summer frock-clad girl happily looks on. It received more than 119K likes on her official Instagram account, where she has nearly a million followers.
Patil performs mostly across cities, villages and tier-2 towns in Western Maharashtra. Most of these shows are sponsored and organised by local groups or for festivals – Ganesh Chaturthi, Navratri, Dahi Handi or even smaller local festivals. For the public, they are free of cost. Patil says she does an average of 20-25 shows a month, netting approximately Rs 2 lakh per performance.
Madhuri Pawar, a Marathi actor and a Lavani dancer, questions Patil’s style, saying the genuineness must be preserved while performing any Lavani number.
“It is our responsibility to keep the art as is while putting our own innovation into it. The balance has to be there,” Pawar says. “Lavani is not just about hand and body movements. The attire and facial expressions are equally important.”
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Pune-based Rajendra Jarad Patil, who identifies himself as a Maratha community coordinator, declared last month that the dancer should not use ‘Patil’ (a typical Maratha surname) as her last name because it brings “a bad name” to the community.
“But I am a Patil and will not change my name. Who are these people to tell me to change my name?” she says firmly.
Patil loved performing on stage as a child, but decided to make a career out of it as a teenager to help her family financially. Born in a village in Dhule district, Patil was raised at her maternal grandparents’ house. After finishing the 8th standard, she shifted to Pune with her mother and went on to study till the 10th standard.
“After that, I started working in shows as I had to start earning…my mother met with an accident about a decade ago, so she could not continue her job. I had to start doing events as a result.”
Before her accident, Patil’s mother worked in factories of small and medium-sized companies close to Pune.
She has no formal Lavani training—another bugbear for her critics—but has learnt Bollywood-style dance.
“My first performance was at 16-17 years of age, at the Akulj Lavani Mahotsav in Solapur, as a ‘back dancer’. Here, I got paid Rs 500,” she says, fiddling with her dupatta (stole). Her days were packed with performances at birthday parties, weddings and engagement parties. But she was never the sole performer, just part of a troupe. Around four years ago, she decided to come out of the shadows and perform solo shows.
She was an instant hit in small-town Maharashtra. Many people would come for her performances, which ran to packed houses. But a recent show in October 2022 at Sangli ended in tragedy after an older man in the audience was found dead at the venue. Patil held a press conference expressing regret, but by then, she was branded a “controversy queen.”
A month after the incident, Ghadge put up a Facebook post criticising Patil for her supposed obscenity—emptying a water bottle on herself, not wearing ghungroos while performing and not draping the saree pallu with propriety, as a Lavani dancer should.
“Such things [stunts such as pouring water or wearing the pallu improperly] become viral immediately. But this is not good for our future generation,” Ghadge said seven months later.
“The folk dance needs to be protected, and hence we spoke in the past. But it did not work. Such things are still going on, and nobody can stop them. I am speechless,” Ghadge tells ThePrint.
After Pawar’s diktat, Patil publicly apologised to “dada” (Pawar) for her inadvertent mistakes. Until then, many local NCP leaders from Western Maharashtra were known to host Patil’s shows.
Madhuri Pawar acknowledges the popularity of Patil’s “antics”, which are hugely popular with the audience, making it difficult for purists.
“Because of such performances, now the audience wants only that. I have also done stage shows before. The audience was never like this. I want an audience that will respectfully clap at the end of my performance,” says Pawar.
But all this has not bothered Patil. After a couple of Lavani songs, following some of the “traditional” rules, Patil usually returns to her signature style. She lets her hair loose, unties her ghungroos and rearranges her nine-yard saree to look like a six-yard one. She sways on DJ music, waves to the audience and welcomes children on stage.
And all the criticism she has to battle off stage is drowned out by the roar, “Sabse Katil, Gautami Patil“.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)