In 1838, five Indian temple dancers (devadâ sî), their master (nattuvanâr) and two accompanying musicians left South India by ship to reach firstly Bordeaux, in France, and from there they travelled and performed in other European countries. All were attached to a temple located in the French territory of Pondicherry, and the tour was organized by a French impresario. During their European tour, wherever they danced they were, generally, quite well received. In Paris the Indian troupe was also invited by the members of the French royal family for a special programme held in their palace. Now hardly remembered, the presence of authentic devadâsî on the Parisian stage had, then, a remarkable effect on various French writers and artists. Chief among them, the novelist, librettist and dance-critic Théophile Gautier (1811-72) was their most regular spectator and enthusiastic admirer as well as the critic who wrote about them the larger number of reviews. In this paper I will focus on Gautier’s impressions about the Indian dancers in the context of the Parisian audiences’ reactions to their art. I will analyse also here the construction of the romantic character of the Indian temple dancer, the Bayadère, as it has been ‘re-created’ by Maria Taglioni in the opéra-ballet Le Dieu et la Bayadère (Paris 1830), which strongly contrasted and even ‘competed’ with the authentic Indian devadasis. The presentation will be illustrated by iconographic material. Behind the romantic emphasis on exotic women dancers, I will show how Gautier got impressed by the devadasis’ very artistic skills to such an extent that, later on, some of his most famous librettos for ballets were explicitly inspired by them.
Tiziana Leucci