In Jaipur, it seems like traditional Rajasthani performing arts are disappearing. Even if there are people who still appreciate time-honoured dance, music, and theatre, the spaces in which these arts are experienced, and the portion of the population that has access to them, is changing. A long time ago, Indian street artists were nomadic. Now they’ve settled in cities and their place on the street is occupied by beggars. The gypsy performers of long ago don’t want to be associated with the impoverished, so these days they market themselves as entertainers for hire, performing mainly at weddings and other private functions.
One place we were able to find traditional Rajasthani performers was a theme park called Chokhi Dhani. Entry was expensive, but along with Ferris wheels, acrobats walking across elevated bamboo poles, camel rides, and food stalls, were a dozen circular performer stages. Bhopa-Bhopi dancers, musicians, and ‘snake dancers’ performed on these stages, inviting audience members to step into the ring and dance or sing along with them. The park was exciting but artificial, the full meaning of the performances lost behind the commercial context of the entertainment industry.
We spoke to one of the dancers at the park, and as she talked to us she fingered a thick wad of paper rupees in her hand – the summation of her evening’s earnings. “It’s not good to perform in the street,” she told us. It was much better for her to work at a fair, and even though there was a sign nailed to one of the posts beside her stage that read “Don’t Encourage Tipping”, she’d managed to make a lot of cash. We didn’t ask the dancer whether or not she would be allowed to keep all that she’d made, but we’d been told that one of the major problems performers in Jaipur face is having to pay an unfair percentage of their earnings to a manager. This issue of owing money to a middleman becomes particularly poignant with regards to child performers who may be defenceless against corruption.
On our second day in Jaipur, we went to visit Kalakar Basti, a school in a slum made up of small, clustered brick shelters with dirt floors. Stray dogs, goats, and emaciated cats roamed the slum’s narrow streets, rummaging through layers of debris on the ground. Barefooted children, some only wearing a thin T-shirt, the rest of their body exposed, peered out at us from doorways, smiling and pointing at our cameras.
The school was in a small concrete hut with wire-covered windows and no doors. Kalakar Basti is known for performance training, but the slum is also notorious for prostitution, and the association of the two activities casts an unfortunate shadow over the prospect of the children ever becoming successful performers.
We set up our cameras outside the schoolroom and three young girls between the ages of six and thirteen dressed in colourful, sequin-decked costumes danced for us. Moments later a spectacular combination of drumming and singing accompanied them. It was a glimpse into what street performance must have been like in Jaipur before traditional arts were modernized.
A few days later we met Pramod Bhasin, who works for the Muskaan Foundation, a road safety awareness organization in Jaipur. Bhasin uses local performers like the ones trained at Kalakar Basti to organize plays and puppet shows that publicize the importance of road safety in the city. He knows well the challenges performers face on a day-to-day basis. When we asked him about the decline of street performance and the monetary difficulties contemporary performers face, Mr. Bhasin told us that before the performers can earn enough to support themselves they have to have access to higher quality education.
“They don’t need academic training,” Mr. Bhasin said, “what they need are life skills”. He explained that performers need to be taught to promote themselves. Secondly, he said, they need to learn to demand respect for what they do – to not only ask for a reasonable amount of compensation for their performances, but to expect it. They need to learn English, Spanish, and French, so that they can speak to foreigners and explain the historical significance of their art.
Mr. Bhasin went on to say that traditionally, Indians have a strong sense of family loyalty and strict ties to their communities. Families who earn their income on the streets value group membership even more than regular Indian families do. They will defend their siblings and fight for the protection of their children if need be, but what they lack, Mr. Bhasin said, is governmental support – health care, social security, and arts-centred education programs designed to encourage talented children while teaching appropriate business skills so that performers can eventually participate in a competitive economy as self-employed individuals.
It’s encouraging to know that there are arts-focused schools in Jaipur slums, but frustrating that the schools lack funding to provide the children with the quality of education Mr. Bhasin described. Perhaps with spokespeople like Mr. Bhasin, the quality of life for street performers in Jaipur will eventually improve.
Belle