Folk Arts - Phrabha Rustagi: A Dancer of Tales

by Joan Rabinowitz

 

"You have to hear this, I’ll show you. You’ll be walking when she’s singing.” Seated on the floor, Prabha Rustagi played the table as she talked to her dance students, sometimes playing with only one hand as she used her other hand to demonstrate her point. Prahba regularly taught students from all over India and Fiji in her home. On this occasion, Prahba was preparing her students to perform Kathak dance for a Diwali celebration. Many of her students have been with Prahba for years, starting as young as five years old. “In India, we learned at least six days a week,” Prahba explained. “If you compare it that way, it’s nothing here. But still, they have been here with me for a long time. So they have become quite good. Regularly I’m teaching once a week, but when we have something coming up like this, then on the weekend we just practice extra. I try to keep the younger kids together because they really, really enjoy it. I don’t want to make it too harsh on them, so they enjoy and they learn.”

 

Prahba began learning music and dance when she was a child in Khurja, an agricultural area in North India. “It’s a very small place,” Prahba explained, “but very rich in culture.”

 

“Maybe I was eight or nine when I started,” Prahba continued. “My mother started me on everything. Tabla, dance, and sitar. Vocal training, I kind of tried myself later on. For dance, it’s very important to know the rhythmic pattern, that’s why I learned talba. I’m thankful to my mother. And maybe dance I just enjoyed. And since then, I have been doing it and, I love it, you know,” Prahba laughed and smiled.

 

“I’m from a very small place and socially it was not accepted, if any girl dances or plays tabla in public. Even now some people have said, ‘Oh, you are a lady. I didn’t know that Indian ladies play tabla in public.’ But my mother didn’t care. I think she maybe wanted to be a musician, but she didn’t get a chance to just learn. And now it’s my hobby. I try. I’m not really a musician or dancer, really,” Prahba laughed. “But, I love it.”

 

Prahba trained extensively in the North Indian classical dance tradition of Kathak. “Kathak means the storyteller. It started in the temples,” Prahba explained. “Storytellers used to tell the stories of the gods and goddesses,” Shantha Benegal continued. “But when the Mughals came to India, some Kathaks moved to Mughal courts. So, it developed in a different way as an entertainment. It became more virtuostic, too. Both aspects are there in Kathak now. So, Prahba will usually do something that begins with devotional music, which relates it to its temple beginnings. And then she would do pure dance, which is more virtuostic.”

 

Singer Shantha Benegal has been performing with Prahba for many years in a music group called Leela. “Kathak is a kind of interactive dance form,” Shantha explained. “You cannot really perform Kathak to taped music. You have to have live music because you keep adjusting to one another.”

 

“What happens with taped music,” Prahba continued. “Suppose the tape is going on, and if you miss something, it’s gone. But we have eye contact. Like, if I am dancing, Shantha will just look at me and keep on singing. And sometimes I know she is going to sing. I can keep on doing it, knowing what is going to come next.”

“We don’t often know how big the stage is going to be,” Shantha went on. “So, maybe I have to sing one line ten times instead of six times, or maybe I have to have on expression more emotive than another, or something like that. You never know until you are on the stage and you have to adapt your performance as you go along. That’s why we find it so important to have live music rather than tape.”

 

“Only live music can teach you that. Tape, you’re fixed,” Prahba continued. “I think that’s a good way of learning, because then you learn to adjust, whatever is coming next. And already the students are also learning. Previously they used to get nervous. ‘Oh, we know Shantha! She might do something more, and we have to keep on doing it!” So they’re learning. It’s a big learning experience,” Prahba laughed.

 

“Children have very good memories,” Shantha said. “They will suddenly look at me and say, ‘Hey, you sang that one time less!’ (laughing). It’s funny. But now they have learned to adjust. I think that is an important lesson, that you can’t always have a fixed way of – there is improvisation in this, you know, and that’s the fun of it. It’s not just doing something that is fixed. A lot of it is rehearsed, but in performance, things change and you have to adjust. We keep improvising as we go along. And as you practice more, you can improvise more.”

 

“You want to go through one more time?” Prahba asked her students. “No, that’s too late. Go back. Right there. We’ll do the last part again…”

 

Prahba Rustagi died on December 13, 1994 after performing one month earlier in her last Diwali festival. She is deeply missed by the community.

 

“I have known Prahba for nearly twenty years, and have been privileged to work with her in a number of different ways. Over that period, I have seen a truly marvelous unfolding of her role as a performer, teacher, tradition bearer and community service volunteer. These varied facets of her activity have enriched the lives of a large number of people, and her contributions have reached a stage of maturity and impact that needs to be acknowledged at the highest level… She is a remarkable individual, with great personal resources and a true commitment to enriching the lives of others. By honoring individuals such as her, we rejoice in the capacity of human beings for versatility and celebrate the generosity of the human spirit.”

-Ramesh Gangolli, President of Ragamala, January 8, 1994

 

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