Debonaïr Magazine, March 1997
I don’t know precisely why there is an article about my dad in what’s essentially Indian Playboy, but there is. I mean, I know he was performing in India and collaborating with Gopal Dubey, who I did meet a number of times when I was a young child, but why Indian Playboy?
All the same, it’s actually a pretty complete little biography of his story and what brought him where… It’s also a very colorful review of a performance he and Gopal did in India around this time.
The text from the article is below, as well as pdf scans of the magazine
The Man who Loves War Dancing
If one ever got to see Shiva Mahadeva dance, this is what it might look like. This is dance of an awesome muscularity that leaves you amazed. Mahadeva, great god, great warrior, singer, musician and also dancer; when Mahadeva dances it is the complex spiral energies of Prakriti, the Universe, being directed by the Purusha, the Pure Consciousness that also happens to be a synonym for being male.
To see Henry Smith is to have a glimpse of the Tandava, this is how one would imagine the World Destroyer would dance. Classical dance in India has always stressed the divine element of the character so much so that the character loses all touch with ground reality – divine personages are ever-victorious because they are divine, not because they have physical powers of divine proportions.
Choreographer Pt. Gopal Dubey, who collaborated with Smith in their production Dance of the Warriors, represents that latter aspect. Expressions of power are through the eyes, through the mudras and postures that convey vira rasa, the heroic attitude. When Henry Smith sweeps around in an explosive twirl, his muscled forearm pulsing, we almost recapture the ancient art of Vajramusthi – the thunderbolt-fist used by Mahadeva to crack asura skulls. Mahadeva was not only Aushutosha, the Auspiciously Benign, but also Rudra.
Rudra literally means the Howler, and it is an interesting coincidence that Smith began his performance at the NCPA with a sound that can only be described as a yowl. It was the overture (of sorts) to a sacred hymn of the Lakota Indians, invoking the energies of the cardinal points and culminating benediction to “all my family”.
It never ceases to amaze that cultures, derisively dismissed as backward constantly, have such a universal outlook embedded in their traditions. Smith has lived with them, the Lakota Sioux Indians, off and on for 18 years. The sacred chant that he performed, for instance, was something he had learnt and taken special permission to include in dance performances. It was a bizarre, not to mention disturbing, sight to see a white man garbed in robes and feathers drumming away, the questions of culturally marginalised traditions being fodder for performances did rise.
But Smith doing that is in itself an indication of how much he has won them over. Such sharing of their lore, he explains, is one way they seek to reclaim the identities, their traditions, it is legitimised in a larger perspective.
“This varies from tribe to tribe. Some are open, others not so, while a few are downright hostile. You have to respect that, they have good reasons, you know. I wanted a cross-cultural interaction between the Indians and me that would keep the word, written or verbal, out of the equation. American Indian history is a terrible example of broken promises, words gone back on, or treaties that were wicked in the extreme. That line of dialogue has too much negativity associated with it, but dance and music being non-verbal forms of communication, I wished to develop them as a method of bringing the cultures a bit closer.
This is not mere politically correct posturing. The respect with which he talks of Elder Ben Black Bear equals the respect this fifth dan in aikido has for his senses.
“Learning from the American Indians has only reinforced my dance and martial arts. In America, see, the process of assimilation is very strong, from the East Coast it sweeps West, so these traditions are in danger of being swamped. I got so involved that ultimately I undertook a Hanblecheya – crying for a vision. It was a four-day process of fasting on a mountaintop with only a pipe allowed. No water – which is the hardest part. A convenient shorthand for all this would be ‘vision quest’ – but that involves journeys and such like. That’s more South American. I worked up to the four-day fast from two days, two-and-a-half to three days, every year a bit more. You get scrubbed out by the process, every sense gets preternaturally sharp. You being to feel the persona of the wind change as it blows from different directions; you hear animals and birds move. Most of all, there is a oneness with the Universe, a calm. This is common in nearly all cultures as a mystical experience, so we do have to call it wisdom.”
Smith has enough of that, he uses his experiences creatively. Founder and Artistic Director of Solaris Dance/Theatre/Video he has made two award-winning documentaries on the American Indian. Two videos, Vision Dance and Live and Remember, cover the areas of dance and lifestyle under threat. Another video, Life in the Dust, covers his company’s tours of Africa. Smith is convinced that when dance has not become over-intellectualised, it is organic to life.
Yet, if things had gone differently this father of two little boys would never have been a dancer. He was a football hero in his native Philadelphia, and threw the shot put too when he wasn’t pumping iron for three hours a day. “As you put it, I was a jock. That gave me a fellowship to Edinburgh University and I got a master’s in political economy. I was also breaking Olympic records while working out at weightlifting, causing enough of a sensation to be selected for the Scottish national team for the Commonwealth games. I turned it down because I was committed to theatre and dance by then. I was also training the Black Watch, the Scottish regiment, in shot put. I joined the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts as also the London Contemporary Dance Theatre. Alongside this, I had discovered aikido. I needed a martial arts discipline to keep me calm. I was a hot-headed brawler thinking I was God because of my football skills. In 1968, when I was 21, I discovered Chiba Sensei, my first teacher in aikido. He said that aikido is like a dance of purification and that line has never left me. You cannot do aikido well if you are a violent person, you know. Since then, my aikido and dance have been complementary processes, not even parallel ones.”
Smith had all the classic American hustle and the list of people he has danced with is a Who’s Who – Robert Cohan, Merce Cunningham, Norman Walker, and so on. Acting skills came from Mira Rostova, Katherine Sergava and a stint in Chaibin’s Open Theatre Ensemble. His skills as a dancer were growing formidably. So impressed was Anna Sokolow with his interpretation of her mime-theatre piece Act Without Words that she retired it from her repertoire and gifted it to Smith.
While founding Solaris, he also created his first solo-dance-theatre piece Cerberus: A Journey to the Power of Self. “I think every warrior is a bit ridiculous, a bit of a clown, and I wanted to show that it is inner strength and grace that counts, not violence.”
Smith has the ability, drawn from theatre, to speak, sing, recite, scream and vociferate while dancing at the same time. His voice goes from a deep rumble to a piercingly irritating falsetto, and his centre of gravity must be below the floor, the way his figure stays close to the ground. That Leonardo painting or an arm that can flutter like a bee’s wings, the body spiraling implosively, the tree-trunk thighs suddenly levitating and floating down like feathers going thump! This is intensity of movement, a throbbing, brooding ripple that snakes across the stage to leap up in an incandescent outburst of joy. Abruptly, he can sink into a rock-like stillness and only the high, keeping, wail of a chant that pours over you reveals the pulsing fiery energy within.
Smith can do these extraordinary things with a body that is about three times heavier and muscular than the average dancer’s, because of his ki breathing practice. In Paris, stunned audiences have dubbed this man’s visual near-impossibility – muscles in flight – “le phenomene”. Ki is life-force, and, as in yoga, breath-control is the way to harmonise it. Energies rise in spirals, as does the breath, and to breathe properly is of the essence. When Smith draws in vast quantities of air and then forcefully expels them, again one is reminded of Shiva. The Himalayas were described by Kalidasa as an attahasam of Shiva, a frozen outburst of earth-shaking laughter. To see and hear Smith is to catch a reduced glimpse of that ki breathing which is part of his aikido training.
Aikido looks simple, is fiendishly difficult, to learn, and is devastatingly effective. Aikido does not believe in mano-a-mano confrontations, there is no straight line, equal force counters. Aikido is the art of the spiral, of the polite rotational counter that deflects an incoming thrust. Force is not opposed, it is deflected, gone round. It is the martial art of self-deprecation, of humorous non-resistance and a calm inner strength that makes angry attackers look and feel foolish. Smith demonstrated in a very kindly fashion to me and more than once, even as he was calmly enumerating its many non-confrontationist virtues, I found myself with an arm and elbow twisted into grotesque shapes while every bone, sinew and tendon hurt like hell. This is the speed of the conjurer’s hand, for, while he is explaining it every step of the way, you get rogered before you can take counter measures, for there is no resistance to brace yourself against. Of course, if real force was used, I couldn’t write this.
Part of his training was with the katana, the samurai long sword, and Smith uses iaido, the art of the fast draw, as part of the performance. A katana, as a design concept, is Aafreen – that which cannot be praised, it has gone beyond it. In Smith’s hands, the weapon flows out of its sheath in silence, the only sound it makes being the clang of the hilt as the blade swoops back into the scabbard in the ritualised art of sheathing. Again and again, he draws, runs the unbladed edge over the mouth of the scabbard and, as the point feels empty space, in slides the blade. As an act of beauty, it is as impressive as any puja ritual – and done with as much reverence. Except that this is a lethal act of beauty and Smith innovatively uses it to show the spiritual fog of the warrior whose response to dilemmas is to lash out with his blade. A sword, he explained, is useless if thought of as a killing implement. It is used to confront violence, it is a focus for meditation, a living embodiment of your energies. The samurai’s sword was described as his soul and was an object of great reverence. The aikido attitude, of course, allows Smith to give it that respect even as he uses it in dance. (The dance sword is not an antique, but a practice sword, so no real objection can be raised.)
Smith, a sensei himself, teaches aikido in Philadelphia – whenever he is there that is. “I love teaching, and if in Philadelphia four to five days a week, you’ll see me teaching. This is no effort at all. Aikido, however, is a lot of process work of internal transformation. It is not about being spectacular. It is, however, a very creative, very practical, form, one that keeps your feet on the ground, allows you peace and acceptance of yourself. I did a bit of Tai Chi and Brazilian fighting arts, but one has to stick to a few things if one wants proficiency. So now it’s aikido and dance. Both my sensei, Chiba Sensei and Yamada Sensei, were Vihidashi (house disciples) of aikido’s founder Morihei Ueshiba, so I guess I am fortunate. Dance, however, I guess I can only perform for another five to six years. Then I will choreograph. My knee has not given out as yet, a daily miracle as well as thanks to you Ayurveda physician, Govindan Kutty. My wife is a massage therapist, so I can appreciate what he did for me.”
As we wind down, a naughty thought surface – did he face any hassles because he is a dancer? The question evokes a little burst of laughter. “Isn’t that a universal problem all male dancers face? The taunts, the suggestive remarks. People prefer to see the female figure dancing, as Gopal Dubey was telling me. Men are to be gurus only. (Astad Deboo made exactly the same comment to me about the preferred visual on stage. So one guesses that’s conclusive.) One would think that with my sports background, I would escape that, but no, I got my full quota of sissy boy comments. Gopal tells me it’s worse for male dancers in India. I think that’s very strange. After all, Nataraja, the Lord of Dance, is an Indian concept. Why do you think this is so?”
Perhaps, Sensei Smith, we in India haven’t seen you dancing. If we had, the identification would have been instant – Nataraja. His image. Henry Smith. War dancer.