120 SOCIAL SCIENTIST deeper understanding of the problem of women's issues in the performing arts. 1 Observations based on interviews with artists, students, teachers, critics and informed - audience. 2 See especially the following: W.H. Deshpande. Maharashtra's Contribution to Music, New Delhi 1972, pp 6, 51; Mohan Khokar: * Dance in Transition: The Pioneers' in Marg, Vol. XXXVI, No. 2, November, 1984. L.G. Sumitra, Women in the performing arts (unpublished paper) 3 Hanna Papanek, Gail Minault, Separate Worlds and Symbolic Shelter 1980, New Delhi has a discussion on the 'unsheltered' woman. 4 Extending this further, traditional women singers will protest vehemently that they are not prostitutes—as indeed they are not, but a society that creates prostitutes is a society that devalues all women in one way or another. 5 Bhairaw Se Sohani Tak, New Delhi, February, 1983. 6 An example of this was a festival organised in the early pan of the Decade by Sangeet Natak Academy. 7 An example of such an approach is Shree: The Many Facets of Woman, New Delhi, May 1985. 8 The Nayika, the woman character is the central figure in dance and music and yet curiously a sense of a real person is absent in the detailed and carefully dilineated depictions. Each expresses mechanically the set emotions of coyness, anger, sorrow (at separation) and joy (again at reunion). 9 See 'Nayika' in US Krishna Rao: A Dictionary of Bharata Natya New Delhi, 1980, pp 55, 56. 10 Women Music Makers of India, New Delhi, September, 1984. 11 See 'Women Musicians; A Seminaf in the Bulletin of the Centre for Women's Development Studies Vol. 2, No. 2, November, 1984. 12 So-called lighter styles, associated generally with women singers 13 Any serious discussion of women's issues and the performing arts cannot shy away from the significance of the romantic-erotic, element in the traditional repertoire, and understanding how and why it comes to be associated with it Wishing it away or trying to whitewash it does not get rid of the problem. Though, ofcourse, the very ambivalence towards it-it is also considered rasa raj-is significant 14 See 'Women Musicians Fail To Impress', Statesman, 10th. Sept'84 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid. 18 Such a view was also expressed by many in the audience. 19 Angika by Chandralekha. ^or a brief description see NCPA's brochure of this experiment, and brochure issued on the occasion of Max Muller Bhavan, Madras 25th. anniversary celebrations. 20 Admittedly this is not easy. By their very nature, the classical arts are exclusive and esoteric and guard their exclusiveness jealously. It is difficult for an 'outsider' to break in-and almost everyone who is not pan of the mystification process is considered an outsider. This is however not to say that activists have not, on their own, experimented with music and dance. They have-but those experiments are quite different in nature, content and context They would moreover require consideration by themselves 21 Introduction to Patnaik and Dingwaney(ed): Chains of Servitude; Bondage and Slavery in India, New Delhi. 1985. pp.6. 25.