Maya Rao — the woman whose ‘unkept promise’ brought Kathak to south India

Maya Rao's mastery of Kathak under Shambhu Maharaj was such that she performed with him — a rare feat of the ‘guru’ performing with the ‘shishya’.

Maya Rao. | Photo Credit: Natya Institute of Kathak and Choreography

For decades, the Indian classical dance form, Kathak, was seemingly confined to the North of the Vindhyas. The dictum had been that barriers of both geography and culture constrained the expression of this art form in the rest of India. But Maya Rao, born in Bangalore on 2 May 1928, in the erstwhile state of Mysore, upended these dogmas through her zeal and passion for the dance form.

Her journey with Kathak epitomises the ability of art to transcend geographically-induced cultural confines in heterogeneous nation-states. As writer Shobha Narayan assessed in Mint, “If you ask people why Maya Rao is great, they will tell you one line: she brought Kathak to south India.”

Rao was known for her command of “Abhinaya”, the art of mastering expression whilst performing. She is regarded as one of the contemporary pioneers of classical Indian dance.

A promise unkept

In her autobiography, In A Lifetime in Choreography, Maya Rao recalls the challenges she overcame to start learning Kathak: “My father, Hattangady Sanjeeva Rao, a reputed architect, was so bowled over by Uday Shankar’s performance that he wanted to encourage learning dance in our house too. However, this excitement of his was unfortunately not for me.”

In their abode in Bengaluru’s Malleswaram, opposite a railway station, Maya and her siblings were already learning Hindustani classical music. The family’s music guru, Rama Lal, on learning that Mr Rao wanted his children to learn dancing introduced the family to Sohan Lal, a Kathak exponent of the Jaipur Gharana.

However, initially, only Rao’s younger sisters—Uma and Chitra—and her brother Ramesh were allowed to be taught by Sohan Lal. It took two years of relentless pursuit from Maya to convince her father to allow her to learn Kathak.

Even then, she was only allowed to take up Kathak under a condition. Maya Rao recalls, “I was allowed to learn dance with a promise that I would not dance professionally or perform on stage, a promise that I, fortunately, did not keep.”

At the age of fourteen then, began Maya Rao’s tryst with Kathak.

Mastery of Kathak under Shambhu Maharaj

Whilst still picking up Kathak, Maya became the head of the dance club at her school, the Kamalabai’s Girls School.

Sadly, in 1946, Rao’s father passed away, and she decided to teach dance to sustain a livelihood. Taking the next logical step as a teacher, in 1947, she opened the Natya Saraswathi Dance and Music Centre with M.S. Nataraj. As The News Minute catalogues, they would eventually get married, and he became one of South India’s first cultural impresarios.

Rao taught Kathak and other contemporary dance forms like ballet to girls from the centre. Always one to push social barriers and question parochial practices, Rao was able to challenge the societal conservativism preventing girls from privileged families from learning dance via the centre.

Simultaneously, Rao continued developing her skill set. She left for Jaipur to be under the tutelage of the Kathak gurus of the Jaipur Gharana. As her sister Venugopal Rao recalls, the pivotal moment in her life came in 1954 when she was granted a scholarship from the Government of India to practice and research Kathak. This scholarship gave her tutelage from the venerable Kathak maestro Shambhu Maharaj.

Her mastery of Kathak under Shambhu Maharaj scaled such heights that she performed with him on stage. A rare feat in India’s classical art forms where the ‘guru’ performs with the ‘shishya’.

Moscow, NIKC & moving back to Karnataka

Rao’s passion for dance eventually took her to Moscow, where she completed a three-year post-graduate degree in choreography and ballet from the erstwhile USSR. She remains amongst a few classical dance performers from India to have received a degree in choreography.

Writer Vikram Sampath notes, that Indian productions like Shakuntala, which she performed in Moscow, won her great accolades. According to The Hindu, Maya Rao’s performances such as Amir Khusro, Krishnadevaraya, Vijayanagara Vaibhava, and Masti’s Kaamana Billu represent some of her best work.

After Moscow began a new phase in Maya Rao’s life. From being a student, she retook the role of being a teacher. In 1964, in New Delhi, she set up the Natya Institute for Kathak and Choreography (NIKC). The institute would become the premier academy for learning Kathak, ballet, and other dance forms. Stalwarts of the Indian music and dance scenes like Pandit Ravi Shankar and Anil Biswas were amongst the regulars at the school.

The import of the institute was such that in 1987, then Chief Minister of Karnataka, Ramakrishna Hegde, requested her to shift the NIKC to Bengaluru. Rao agreed, and soon hundreds of children were learning Kathak at the relocated institute. The centre soon became affiliated with Bangalore University, and apart from Kathak, even taught ballet.

While her legend within the dance world continued to grow and many were inspired to take up Kathak after reading about her or seeing her perform, the relocation to Bengaluru acted as a fillip to Kathak’s relevance in the south; a whole new generation had access to her. Sai Venkatesh, a manager at the NIKC, first started by attending a short-Kathak workshop and eventually stayed with the institution for 25-years.

Teaching 4,000 students

Maya Rao won many awards for her Kathak and choreography throughout her career. The Sangeet Natak Academy award, the Shantala award, the Tagore award, the Kala Shri award and an honorary doctorate from Bangalore University stand out.

Through the NIKC, both in Delhi and Bengaluru, Maya Rao taught and inspired over 4,000 students to learn Kathak, ballet, and other dance forms. Through her wizardry and grace on stage, she transcended the geographical and cultural barriers that had shackled the confluence of India’s classical dance forms.

While she passed away on 1 September 2014—her legacy lives on via the NIKC and the thousands who she inspired to learn Kathak’s ta thei thei tat.