Tagore’s Dance-Drama Omnibus

The six dance-dramas translated in this book cover a culmination of Rabindranath Tagore’s dance-interest in the latter’s most effulgent manifestation. It was only in the last half decade of Tagore’s life that his dance-consciousness reached its zenith and he could offer the best of his life-time passion for dance in the form of six dance-dramas, namely, two music-dramas: Taser Desh(interspersed with prose dialogue), Shapmochan(with narrator) and four full-bodied dance-dramas: Chitrangada, Shyama, Chandalika and MayarKhela(re-visited).

All the dance-dramas are predominantly ‘recitative’ music dramas. The clear story-line is piggybacked mainly on the ‘recitative’ pattern of the melodiously articulated dialogues and narratives, interlaced with songs. The translation follows closely the letter and spirit of the original(including the lyrics), in trying to do justice not only to the rhythm and metre of the original, but also the internal rhymes, so that the exquisite poetry and lyrical beauty of Tagore can be savoured even in the translation.