
75 years of Darpana: Mallika Sarabhai on arts that create social change
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Mallika Sarabhai was around 10 years old when she was introduced to the idea of art for social change by her mother, noted dancer and choreographer Mrinalini. “Amma, who had been born and brought up in the south, moved to Gujarat after her wedding.
It was while she was trying to learn Gujarati from newspapers that she read about young girls in Saurashtra jumping into wells—some times with their newborns," she says. When Mrinalini discussed the news report with other writers and poets who were her friends, including Jayanti Dalal and Umashankar Joshi, they explained the distressing reason behind it—that girls were being harassed for dowry by their in-laws, and unwilling to distress their parents further, they were driven to suicide. “The term ‘dowry death’ did not exist back then.
Amma was horrified. So she took Bharatanatyam—her primary form— and shifted from the inherent shringara bhava to talk about dowry-related violence. I grew up watching her use per forming arts to raise voice for such issues," says Sarabhai, 71.
It was in 1949 that Mrinalini and her husband, renowned scientist Vikram Sarabhai, set up the Darpana Academy of Performing Arts in Ahmedabad along the Sabarmati river not just to create a space for diverse dance and music forms but also for such pertinent issues. Today, as the cultural centre celebrates 75 years, the vision remains the same. “Sadly, the issues from back then have remained the same—violence, hatred and destruction.
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