Few critics or historians have been as central to the performing arts as Sunil Kothari has been to the world of traditional Indian dance. As a critic, scholar and teacher of youthful energy, he explored India’s rich dance spectrum in at least a dozen books. Choreographers and dancers across the country met him both as an authority and as a friend.
He died on December 27 at the age of 87 at the Fortis Escorts Heart Institute in Delhi. Three weeks earlier He had announced on social media that he had Covid-19 but had recovered. Shortly after his release, he suffered cardiac arrest and was taken to the hospital.
Mr. Kothari, who lectured frequently in the United States, studied the traditions and techniques of dance forms from north India south and east to west and interviewed hundreds of gurus, many of whom in a country that remains largely ethnocentric, declined his efforts to because he didn’t speak their national language.
“He worked hard,” wrote Maya Kulkarni Chadda, his longtime friend and Indian scholar, in an email, “with no money, no real support and no encouragement.”
Even so, he made progress and lived in extreme simplicity while working as a dance critic for The Times of India for over three decades. As he told The Hindu newspaper in 2016, he discovered India through his research. He also helped India discover itself. In his books, each examining one Indian dance genre – Bharatanatyam, Chhau, Kathak, Kuchipudi, Odissi and Sattriya – he opened up a different facet of Indian society and history.
Studying the languages, rhythms, and traditions of each genre was no easy task. Bharatanatyam, for example, existed in the southeastern state of Tamil Nadu in two forms: the traditional one, passed down by the temple dancers and developed by the dancer Balasaraswati; and the relatively new academic system developed by dancer Rukmini Devi Arundale in Chennai.
Although the two styles were often at odds, Mr. Kothari admired and drew both in books and conversed with both Balasaraswati and Devi. He also followed developments that opened the older genre to new sociological and feminist thinking, as well as yoga.
Sunil Manilal Kothari was born on December 20, 1933 in the Kheda district of Gujarat on the west coast of India as the youngest of ten children of Dahiben and Manilal Kothari into a middle-class family.
In the 1940s the family moved to Mumbai, where Mr. Kothari began studying the Kathak at the age of 10, one of India’s eight classical dance genres that combines Muslim and Hindu elements, statuary poses, quick turns and sudden stops to create brilliant musical resonance .
As in most other classical Indian genres, the movements in Kathak are performed barefoot, with straps of tiny bells attached to the ankles and eloquent use of the face, eyes, hands and torso.
Sunil was 13 years old when India became an independent nation in August 1947. When the country rediscovered itself in a post-colonial era, Mr. Kothari observed its cultural developments in dance. A polymath full of literature, film, and other genres, he loved dance both for its own sake and because of its deep connections to the religion, philosophy, scripture, and music of India.
However, his professional training was initially in accounting. He taught at Sydenham College of Commerce and Economics in Mumbai for several years in order to make lasting friends while maintaining his fascination with the dance forms of India.
After Mr. Kothari’s death, the writer Salil Tripathi, a long-time friend from the period who later moved to New York, wrote in homage: “He taught bookkeeping because he knew how to do it; He celebrated dance because he wanted to. “
When Mr. Kothari gave up accounting for dance writing, the decision went against his father’s will. He graduated with a Masters degree in 1964 and began publishing serious dance research four years later.
His subsequent research led him not only to travel through India with a British Council Fellowship and other cities, but also to London to broaden his horizons. By 1970 he became a dance critic for the Times of India and held that position until the beginning of the 21st century.
In 1977, Mr. Kothari obtained his doctorate. at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, with a focus on the dance drama traditions of South India and the ancient dance manual Natyashastra. He was awarded a Doctor of Letters by Rabindra Bharti University for his research on dance sculpture in the medieval temples of North Gujarat.
His scholarship was rewarded with a number of academic offices and a 2005 Fulbright scholarship. He was a member of UNESCO’s International Dance Council.
In the West, Mr. Kothari had encounters with dance figures such as Rudolf Nureyev, the choreographers Pina Bausch and Maurice Béjart, and the British theater director Peter Brook. As a frequent lecturer in the United States, he made his last trip to New York City in May 2019 when he spoke at the New York Public Library about mid-20th century dance greats Ram Gopal and Mrinalini Sarabhai. He carried his expertise easily and often spoke with an innocent-sounding delight.
Information about his survivors was not immediately available.
By the time of his death, Mr. Kothari had completed an autobiography that has yet to be published.
