Parshwanath Upadhye and Adithya PV's new bharatanatayam production explores homosexuality

There is a particular kind of silence that falls in a theatre every time the performers of Punyah Dance Company unfold the plot of their new production. For them, bharatanatyam has long been a medium to view and present ancient tales from a different perspective and an art form that is unafraid to ask inconvenient questions. But their latest work asks one that lands differently...

Having premiered at San Francisco and later showcased at NCPA Mumbai, Asthitva: Tale of the Pregnant King has finally made its way to Bengaluru. Conceived and performed by Parshwanath Upadhye and Adithya PV, this is a satirical dance production that does what the finest works within the form have always accomplished with such grace: it holds profound human enquiry within the vessel of the mythological lore.

“It’s a fictional tale of a pregnant king, inspired by a story from the Mahabharata, where a king gets pregnant due to some curse. We just wanted to do something with it, because it’s such an interesting topic. A man getting pregnant and showcasing that concept in classical dance was something we thought was worth exploring,” Adithya reveals.

The story unfolds with a king, his kingdom parched by drought and his dynasty without an heir. “Amidst this crisis, the king hears an akashavani (voice of Lord Varuna) who commands him to journey into a forest and retrieve a sacred devi idol, which will help restore rain to the kingdom. So, he ventures into the forest and realises how his steps take him from the dry, parched land into the forest where everything is flourishing. There he comes across a young sage, who also happens to be the guardian of the idol the king is in search of. Soon after, the king falls in love with the sage,” the dancer narrates.

What follows is a love that challenges the foundations of duty. The satire, as the makers intend it, turns its gaze towards structure, towards the expectations of dynasty, towards the court’s certainty about what a king must be and towards the distance that so often exists between public honour and private truth.

“In classical dance, same-sex love is very rarely explored — if at all. It is probably the first duet performance by seasoned dancers where something like this is explored in a good way and not making fun of it the way films have so often done. The king forgets all about his kingdom and begins living in the forest with the sage. Then one day, the people of his kingdom come to bring him back and he finds himself at a crossroads to choose either his love or his duty. He finally decides to steal the idol and takes it back to the kingdom. It starts raining and everyone is happy, everyone other than the king, because he had to give up on his love,” he shares.

The performance raises questions that are not new — Indian narratives are full of folklores of miraculous, divine disruptions, but the king is not a figure of ridicule here. He is a figure of profound complexity, navigating situations that the world around him does not accept. “The sage comes to know that the king has stolen the idol and feels betrayed and cheated. So, he curses the king to become pregnant — because the king had concealed the idol around his stomach when he left. The sage tells him that the very people he did this for will laugh at him and eventually the kingdom’s citizens start mocking their monarch,” he tells us, while keeping the ending under wraps.

The score, Adithya explains, is rooted in carnatic and hindustani traditions, with experimental touches woven through certain passages — though the overall musical landscape remains faithful to the classical traditions. With the production already pushing into uncharted territory, the intention, he says, was to offer audiences familiar ground in music and costumes, mindful that classical dances carry a traditionconscious audience.

₹531 onwards. April 26, 7 pm. At MLR Convention Centre, JP Nagar.