Mallika Sarabhai: Dance to change the world

TL;DR

Mallika Sarabhai argues that dance, storytelling, and other arts can change the world by breaking through prejudice and communicating injustice where lectures often fail. She connects a story about rape and unequal justice with examples including a dance that prompted Prime Minister Nehru to begin an inquiry and her performances as Draupadi in Peter Brook’s “The Mahabharata.” Read on for her evidence that art can move audiences and influence action.

Transcript

One day a one-eyed monkey came into the forest. Under a tree she saw a woman meditating furiously. The one-eyed monkey recognized the woman, a Sekhri. She was the wife of an even more famous Brahmin. To watch her better, the one-eyed monkey climbed onto the tree. Just then, with a loud bang, the heavens opened. (Claps) And the god Indra jumped into... Read More

Key Insights

• 🐵 Gender-based violence is a pervasive issue in India, with a rape occurring every three minutes and a low conviction rate of only 4% in reported cases.
• 🐱 Injustice is often prevalent in society, with certain ethnic and social groups being disproportionately charged with crimes, such as aboriginals in Australia, Muslims and Adivasis in India, and blacks in the U.S.
• 🐰 Art has a unique power to break through barriers and reach people, offering a language that can effectively address social issues and challenge established beliefs and prejudices.
• 🐼 Practical solutions exist to address public health challenges, such as providing clean water in areas without access to clean water sources through a simple method of using folded cotton garments to filter water.
• 🐸 Violence is a pervasive problem in society, from domestic violence to road rage, and it is essential to educate children and young people on non-violent ways to deal with anger and frustration.
• 🐦 Mainstream art, cinema, and media can be powerful tools for addressing social issues and spurring social change, as seen in films like "Rang De Basanti" and soap operas tackling breast cancer awareness.
• 🐥 The arts need to be integrated into future planning and policymaking, as they have the potential to be a catalyst for social change and can break down barriers that traditional approaches have failed to address.
• 🐢 The traditional notions of what a planner or strategist looks like must be challenged, and the arts must be embraced as an integral part of creating a better, more just world.

Questions & Answers

Q: How can dance and art change the world, according to Mallika Sarabhai?

Sarabhai says art can break through people’s prejudices, identities, and defensive masks to reach them where ordinary lectures cannot. She argues that this makes storytelling, dance, theater, cinema, and media powerful ways to confront injustice and influence social change.

Q: Why does Mallika Sarabhai begin with the story of a one-eyed monkey?

The story exposes a form of justice that protects powerful men while leaving a raped woman ruined. Sarabhai uses the confused monkey’s perspective to ask whether people have stopped seeing injustice and whether the powerful are allowed to present their version as “The Truth.”

Q: What figures does Sarabhai give about rape and justice in India?

She says a rape occurs in India every three minutes. She also states that only 25 percent of rapes reach a police station and that convictions occur in only four percent of those reported cases.

Q: Why does Sarabhai believe storytelling works better than lecturing about injustice?

She says she has told her opening story close to 550 times to audiences in 40 countries, and it affects listeners each time. By contrast, she believes many people would reject a direct lecture about justice and injustice because they feel they have other things to do.

Q: How did a dance piece lead to an inquiry into dowry-related deaths?

Sarabhai’s mother created a dance about young brides in rural Gujarat who were taking their lives after being pressured to bring more money to their in-laws’ families. After Prime Minister Nehru saw the piece and asked about it, he initiated the first inquiry into what Sarabhai calls “Dowry Dance.”

Q: What did Sarabhai learn while performing Draupadi in Peter Brook’s “The Mahabharata”?

Sarabhai found that Draupadi’s experience resonated with women across very different communities. She recalls responses from Black women in the Bronx, young people at the Sorbonne, and Aboriginal women in Africa, which convinced her that performance could provide a shared language.

Q: How does Sarabhai describe unequal treatment by justice systems in different countries?

She identifies a pattern in which marginalized groups are disproportionately charged with crimes or imprisoned. Her examples are Aboriginal people in Australia, Muslims and Adivasis in India, and Black people in the United States.

Q: What simple clean-water method does Sarabhai describe?

She says a clean cotton garment folded eight times can reduce bacteria by up to 80 percent when water is sieved through it. She presents the method as an affordable public-health idea for places where governments have not provided clean water and costly machines are impractical.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• The speaker tells a story to illustrate the injustice faced by women and the flaws in the justice system.

• She discusses the unequal distribution of justice in various countries, highlighting how certain marginalized groups are disproportionately affected.

• The speaker emphasizes the power of art in breaking barriers and reaching people, citing examples of how art has influenced social change in different contexts.