Rond De Jambe In A Chouka

They are among the many foreign artists and performers who have set up base in and work out of India, creating unique artistic and cultural enclaves. No short-term assignments these, their engagement with India is committed, involving an active and steady collaboration with local artists and craftsmen. Where once Puducherry and Goa were the preferred centres, Rajasthan now seems to be emerging as the hub du jour.

The pull of India has been both potent and extraordinary. For Hiroko Mikami (now called Hari Dasi), it was Satyajit Ray’s films. After watching them at a festival in Japan, Mikami, 42, was inspired to learn Bengali. She eventually moved to Calcutta in 2003 to join an artists’ community. At a Baul festival in Sriniketan, near Shantiniketan, she met, fell in love with and later got married to Satyananda Baul. After learning music under Baul Gurudeb Haripada Goswami, Mikami is now an established Baul singer. “Calcutta is my home,” she says resolutely.

Like Mikami, 31-year-old Colleena was enticed into an unexpected tryst with India. This Californian had been learning belly-dancing in her hometown. A chance viewing of Odissi got her so obsessed with the dance form that she booked a ticket to India to learn and master it. “It had elegance, refinement, a deep connect with the divine and was transcendental. It worked like a magnet on me,” she remembers. That was in 2001. Later, in 2002, she travelled to Rajasthan and fell in love with the Kalbelia folk dance. “It’s wild, unchoreographed, raw, about living in the moment,” she says. Now, she lives in and runs Shakti School of Dance in Pushkar, organises dance workshops, and performs Odissi and Kalbelia, as also fusion dance. For Colleena, both Rajasthan and America are home. And yet, she finds herself sticking out in both places. “Physically, linguistically, I’m different. The ways of thinking, the value systems are different in Rajasthan. But with my bindi and nose ring, I stand apart in America too,” she says.

While Colleena calls two continents home, for Cathy, from Montreal, and Roberto Nieddu, from Italy, home is India. They met in Jodhpur, got married, and nested here in 1994. Since the early ’90s, Cathy had been visiting Jodhpur to source design work for her company and Roberto used to come looking for furniture and jewellery for his shops in the US. They now run an architectural design consultancy, and CRN Productions, a performing arts centre that helps foster dialogue between local artists and those from the West.

For some others, discovering India was a chance event. Like French mosaic artist Herve Vital, 40, who had come to visit a friend and was overcome by the magic of Rajasthan. Herve graduated from Estienne School and Ecole National Superieur Des Arts et Techniques and had been working as a costume and set designer. To work quietly in mosaics had been his dream. He realises it now at his workshop and home in the shadow of the Amber Fort. “I was tired of the work I was doing in France, needed renewal and inspiration,” he says. “There, time is money. Here, I can work at my own pace,” he adds, talking animatedly about the beauty of the stones and the patterns he combines tesserae into. Deborah’s has been a similar journey. She studied at the Ecole National Superieur Des Arts Decoratifs, the school of decorative arts in Paris, and dabbled in various forms of art work. “I was weary of the work I was doing and decided to travel to Africa and South America,” she recalls. This peripatetic nature brought her to India, where she worked on restoring an old haveli in the Shekhawati region of Rajasthan. Now, she can’t get Jaipur out of her system. “It’s a big enough city, but is still less complicated and stressful,” she says. Staying in India may have distanced her from contemporary trends in the West, but enriched her art in other ways. “I take inspiration from the colours, embroidery, prints of India and have picked up a lot from street kitsch.” For Brigitte Revelli, coming to India has meant creating something original. She left France for Thrissur 15 years ago to learn Kathakali, and got into puppetry, folktales and mythology. She has created a new art form, involving shadow puppetry and Kathakali masks. Brigitte now runs a puppet theatre group called Minnaminungukal Puppets Theatre Cie.

And more new and interesting synergies are being birthed from collaborative projects between the artists. Deborah worked on Nur’s ‘Beirut Loves Jaipur’ project, a unique coming-together of arts and crafts from Rajasthan and Lebanon, with a wide range of products going on display, including posters, jewels, books, teas, sandals, textiles, paper, stationery, bangles, accessories and furniture. Cathy and Roberto have worked with 20 musicians and dancers, the Langas and Kalbelia groups, from around Jodhpur. “Their collaboration with the musicians from the West is a learning experience for both of them. It helps them evolve instead of being stuck in a rut. The artistic communication and dialogue is wonderful,” says Cathy.

Many of these artists have helped revive the local traditions of the places they have settled in. Marie-Noelle Jaffre, 46, has lived in India since 1995. The wife of tabla artist Hameed Khan, Marie-Noelle has been involved in dance, theatre and music. In 2000, they started Kawa Music to promote Rajasthani performing arts and in 2007, organised Kawa Circus, a celebration of the street arts. Their Kawa Cultural Centre, set up in 2008, provides a platform for international and local talent. “The idea is to encourage performing and visual artists to develop their projects, to provide opportunities to not so well-known talents, open people up to different influences and create a good environment and platform for artistic exchange,” she says.

Shifting base to India has, of course, helped the artists too. For Belgian photographer Jonas Spinoy, working in India has been a fascinating, and financially sound, move. Jonas does work for catalogues, websites and publications as also professional wedding photography. His wife is an Indian and he has been based in India for almost eight years. Besides a home and family, India has also given him financial stability. “The market has been going downhill in Europe. India is relatively booming, flourishing. It offers a lot more opportunities,” Jonas says.

The flipside of working out of India are the bureaucratic ordeals and the harsh visa regime that makes little concession for practitioners of art. Despite being artists, most have to work on business visas that have to be renewed frequently each year. For Deborah, the grind is even more fraught with uncertainty and stress. She is permitted to stay here for only two months at a stretch, which means she has to leave once the two months are up, even if only for a day. “It’s tough to just leave everything and go and also requires a lot of money to travel,” she says. Things are, in fact, getting more difficult by the day, with each country toughening its policies in reaction to the tough stance of the other. “We have worked here for almost 20 years. We pay taxes just like everyone else. What we need is a sense of security,” argues Cathy. Or as Herve says: “We have made our career, talent, life and home here. Why let it hang tenuously on an official piece of paper?” But then, artists are ruled more by heart than head. And they can’t get India out of either.

By Namrata Joshi with Dola Mitra and Minu Ittyipe