Summary of 'Dance Like a Man'

The play Dance Like a Man tells the story of three generations; their personal ambitions, sacrifices, struggle, compromises, internal conflicts and the way they try to cope up with the life; and mainly focuses on a dancing couple. In this play reader comes across many emotions and is taken virtually into the world of the characters that is flooded with their dreams, success, failures, frustrations, anguish, manipulations, conflicts and unseen hopes that are too far to achieve. Every character manages to come to terms with the situation and eventually creates an individual Ivory Tower to live in. Here the Researcher would discuss every aspect in detail that deals with the play and the characters. 
Meaning of Dance: 
Dance is a very significant factor in this play that means different things to different characters. Jairaj and Ratna wants to develop their career as dancers and for them Dance is not only a hobby but also life and soul. It is not only their passion but also a tool that will help them to gain desired success. Personally for Jairaj, Dance is a form or a means to express emotions and stands as the tool of defiance, revolt, negation of a particular way of life that was decided by his father, Amritlal. He starts dancing as a hobby or rather a fancy that his father thought would perish after a period of time but it does not happen that way. Jairaj continues his practice of traditional dancing in spite of all the opposition from his father and overtly presents himself as a rebel. He becomes more headstrong because of the support of his wife, Ratna who also was interested in traditional form of dancing. The reason behind Amritlal’s opposition suggests that his mind was not ready to accept his son as a Bharatnatyam Dancer. More than that he was shocked on knowing the fact that Jairaj was planning to grow his hair long just like his Guru, which would enhance his Abhinaya. Amritlal saw dance as something that was practiced by prostitutes, which was turning Temples into Brothels. If we see Amritlal as a father his oppositions were not so very illogical. He gave his son the freedom to practice dance but he was worried that the passion of dance would not lead his son anywhere and he would not be able to support his family in future. In the society everyone wants the Male to earn that much so that the house would run properly but Amritlal knew that dance would not help Jairaj to earn enough money and that would make him unworthy in the eyes of his wife Ratna. For Amritlal, dance was good as far as it remains a hobby but it was not proper to be taken as a profession. And we should not forget that traditional dance, especially for Male was not considered a respectable profession in the olden days in India. Asha Kuthari Chaudhuri says,
“The underlying fear is obviously that dance would make him ‘womanly’ – an effeminate man – the suggestion of homosexuality hovers near, although never explicitly mentioned.” (p. 68)
Dance, for Ratna, serves as an undying passion that drives her character throughout all the actions of the drama. Behind all her moves in the drama, Dance was the main factor. After reading the play one may coin her character a selfish one as she lives only for herself and uses others as a mere tool or a step to go ahead. Her character has a negative shade and that makes her different than others. She involves herself in a relationship with Jairaj and that was a clear self-centered decision on her part. No love or attachment with Jairaj was there on the outset of the relationship. Her overconfidence and faith in her own talent was so much that she hesitated not even once to destroy Jairaj’s career as a dancer joining hands with her father-in-law, Amritlal. She single-mindedly follows her heart overpowered by mind; and tries to be famous using Dance as a medium. Traditional Dance stands as a thing that will help her in earning fame and money along with respect in the world of dancers. Her machinations were so lethal that when Jairaj came to know about her inner desires the purpose was already achieved; leaving Jairaj a failure; mere mediocre dancer. In a way she took the advantage of Jairaj’s love for her and her status as a wife. In the process of having name and fame she sacrificed Jairaj’s life and his substance as a Male. She was a constant force pushing Jairaj towards the world of Dance even when she was aware that he was not talented enough to reach the zenith of success. She was the person responsible for Jairaj’s undoing as a character as well as a dancer. Unfortunately she did not stop here only but went beyond and consciously shaped her daughter’s life also as a Traditional Dancer. Lata, her daughter, was used by her to fulfill her inner suppressed desires to earn fame and money nationwide and abroad. Unknowingly Lata falls in the whirlpool created by Ratna and becomes the object only. Ratna’s endeavors seem very ambitious and manipulative. She was ready to establish her daughter’s career on the right track right from the very beginning and for that she schemes, manipulates and uses all her contacts and links. It is very clear that Ratna saw her own self in her daughter Lata and therefore acted so violently to create a firm, concrete base for her. Symbolically, Lata in the play is none but Young Ratna, who succeeds with the help and support of his mother.
Mahesh Dattani uses Traditional Dance as a medium that creates conflict in the play within the minds of the other characters. As the play goes forward and the actions take place; Dance takes the center stage and pushes the characters outside. Traditional Dance, in the play, is not only a form or a tool that enables the writer to tell his story but it creates its own psyche that guides or misguides the actors on the stage.
Meaning of MAN:
Asha Kuthari Chaudhuri writes, “Dance like a Man is a play that deals with one of Dattani’s pet concerns – gender – through one of his principal passions, dance.” In this play, as a reader, one may find that the play poses some delicate questions among which one surely is of MALE idea. In India people think that traditional dance is meant only for women and it is a land on which no Male should ever tread. Here the question is not of mere dance form or hobby but it has very deep roots in our culture too. It is about the whole conditioning of a Nation that boasts of having the most ancient cultural tradition. Here, dancers are identified as ones who have long hair, womanly gait and effeminate speaking style. It has some homosexual undertones also woven in it but here in the play they are not mentioned directly.
When Jairaj takes up Traditional Dance as a hobby and lifelong craze he takes it as something that gave him pure delight. He never thought Traditional Dance as something that is ‘Proper’ only for women: Here we can say that the decision was brave and daring. He was perfectly convinced with the idea and allows Ratna also to dance. He respected his teacher who was with ‘long hair’ and ‘womanly gait’ as expressed by Amritlal. Jairaj’s approach towards Traditional Dance was sincere and honest; and somewhere his character conveys that he believed in Art for Art’s Sake. When Amritlal expresses his disapproval for the Dance teacher’s coming home and shows contempt for his walk, Jairaj favors the teacher and dance. The radical act of Jairaj, having dance as a hobby, shows that he believed in carving a new path and had the ability and mettle to cling to it. He faithfully follows his hobby only to realize afterwards how he was used by Ratna joining hands with Amritlal. For Ratna Dance was a medium to gain popularity and status and for that she married Jairaj who would never stop her from dancing. Ratna’s selfish inner desire was so powerful that she cold-bloodedly plays with the emotions of Jairaj by misguiding him constantly. In the guise of a true life companion she deceives her husband and tries to curb his potential as a dancer. In order to gain personal aims she sacrifices Jairaj’s abilities. Ratna not only spoils Jairaj’s life but tries to mould her daughter Lata’s life also by making her a traditional dancer. In spite of being a Male member of the family Jairaj never tries to command his authority over Ratna and instead, she, very deliberately plays with his emotions. When Jairaj returned to his father’s house, Ratna disliked it and she says in the play ones,
“You! You are nothing but a spineless boy who couldn’t leave his father’s house for more than forty-eight hours.” 
Shockingly for the readers, Ratna herself discards Jairaj’s Maleness openly and he accepts it without any offence. In the play Maleness of Jairaj was not that much a question of Body than that of mentality. Researcher found that for Ratna Maleness might have meant one’s independent decision making power, doing the work that one liked, living on one’s own conditions, standing on one’s own feet without any support and some other that Jairaj lacked. Interestingly even Jairaj was trying to prove himself an able MALE to Ratna. When Ratna was worried about finding a mridangam player for her daughter he says,
“Will finding a musician make me a man?” 
Through out the play Jairaj appears as one who suffers on account of choosing his own path, which was untrodden by others. His portrayal is so noble that he never blames Ratna for the death of their son Shankar that was the result of her carelessness or insincerity. Opposite to general understanding or expectation here Amritlal, the father-in-law of Ratna, tries to curb Jairaj’s passion for Traditional Dance and for that takes her help. In the play, Dattani puts Jairaj on the end where not the woman but man is targeted. In the play we witness the psychological manipulation of a man by his wife and father. 
Role of Ambition, Revolt, Compromise and Manipulation:
Ambition, revolt, compromise and manipulation are four very essential components of the play Dance Like a Man. In each character the reader will be able to find either of them. The actions of the play are guided by them and because of that only it has become so complex and therefore interesting. The characters have many shades and they are not easy to understand.
Amritlal wants his son Jairaj’s life to move in a particular direction but he has some different likings. Amritlal tries to control him all in vain and there starts the clash of the two ideologies. Jairaj’s mind was inclined to Traditional Dance and his unflinching desire was not extinguishable. His ambition to establish himself, as a well-known dancer was so strong that he staunchly protests against his father’s demands and uses dance as a tool to revolt. To him dance serves as a weapon that helps him in defying the way of life that his father wants him to follow. He rejects the normal conventions by choosing Traditional Dance as his life long passion and presents himself as a Male who believes in leading a new path. It is notable that for him dance was not a profession to earn money but it was something that gave him self-satisfaction. He was not happy by the ways that Amritlal adopted in life to make money. He saw Amritlal as one who was pretentious and deceiver. He was not convinced with the idea of progress in which his father believed. The clash and conflict led them to such an extent from which it was impossible to connect a cord. At one point of time, in a state of anger he leaves his father’s house but ultimately was forced to compromise and returns to him. Amritlal tried to divert Jairaj’s attention from Traditional Dance but failed and then he was forced to join hands with Ratna. Ratna, who was in favor of her husband earlier made a compromise and helped Amritlal just to secure her ambition in his house. She became a partner in the process of Jairaj’s undoing; revealing her negative side. She kept on building her bright future crumbling Jairaj’s talent and enthusiasm. Unlike Lata, her daughter, she exhibits every ill emotion through out the drama and presents herself as one who ends up doing everything to get what she wanted. Her entire character makes the play what it is and Dattani dexterously conveys the things that he wanted to put forward. Ratna’s character manages to grow and blossom despite of all the odds in the life and reaches from which only backward journey was possible. She was led by her ambition at such a speed that never allowed her to reflect on her own doings. The dance, that gave her the aim to succeed eats up the core of her being and personality. Even when Ratna married Jairaj, she had dance in mind and that passion was inextinguishable. Lata knew that Jairaj would not stop her from dancing and that is why she made Unison with him. The very establishment of her married life was rooted in her ambition driven actions and therefore destined to bear bitter fruits. Her mission oriented mind and psyche harmed her in life and never gave the serenity. She not only sacrificed Jairaj’s career but also tried to lead her daughter, Lata’s abilities. She was violently possessive about Lata’s career to succeed and for that she does all the menacing acts. She uses her influence on critics and gets appreciative reviews for her. Ratna’s not so successful career gave her much pain in her young age and she desired to make up for all that by establishing Lata as a promising dancer. Her own dissatisfaction caused her to take all such actions and that made her life full of tensions and disturbance. Her over ambitious nature forced her to say,
“We were never anything great, never will be, and nor will our daughter be anything but an average human being.” 
For her, professional success was everything and humanity was on the backstage. Therefore, in efforts of gaining that trivial professional success she loses her humane element somewhere. In the whole play Lata was the only character that was relatively realistic and content. It is this quality that makes her different from others. For her Traditional Dance was important but it never became a wild passion at any point of time. The desire to take dance, as a hobby was very clear in her mind as she tells Vishwas,
“When I was a little girl, I used to stand near the door and watch mummy and daddy practice. It was magic for me. I knew then what I wanted to be.”
She takes dance as a pure art form and does not link it to any gender. She wanted to pursue dance but her desire was not blended with any passion or force. For her, marrying Vishwas was also important and she wouldn’t sacrifice her love for the dance. Her balanced mind makes her likable and different from her parents. Actually she is away from the circle in which her parents were trapped which was too vicious to believe. She dances and continues to do so because it is a hobby for her and not a way that leads to the path of success. There is no malice, over ambition or misled want in her that keeps her interest in dance. Considering this aspects reader can conclude that Lata stands in stark contrast with other characters.
Dance Like a Man is a play that does not present the character as pure White or Black but it shows their different shades in all possibilities. The characters are capable enough to take the readers along with them in the flow of the dialogues and leave them thinking. The play poses fundamental questions and presents the actors with the best of their talents. It demands the answer whether the world is progressive in real sense or we are still in search of that utopian era where no dance form is actually attached to any gender of the dancer but considered as a pure form of Art.

Summary of Resolution and Independence

The poet establishes in the first two stanzas the mood of nature when he traveled on the moor. The tense can be confusing. Wordsworth begins in the simple past, but the past serves here the uses of the present in the sense of active recollection of emotion in present tranquility. The BUT at the beginning of stanza four introduces the contrast that exists between the joy of nature and the dejection of the poet. The time that he recalls was one of a rising sun, " calm and bright," singing birds " in the distant woods," the " pleasant noise of waters" in the air, the world teeming with " all things that love the sun," the grass jeweled with rain-drops, the hare running is his glee. But the poet's morning is one subjectivity of dejection; on this morning did " fears and fancies" come upon him profusely. In the midst of " the sky-lark warbling in the sky," he likens himself unto " the playful hare"; even such a happy child of earth am I / even as these blissful creatures do I fare; / far from the world I walk, and from all care….' This is the joyous side of his life. But, in the midst of the joy, he thinks of that other kind of day that might come to him, that day of ' solitude, pain of heart, distress, and poverty." In stanza 6 he recalls how his life has been as " a summer, mood," how the sustenance of life in all its nourishing variations has come to him so gratuitously. But, then he thinks also of the possibility that it will not continue so for one who takes no practical thought for his own care and keep. The question is, how long will nature continue to give freely to one who does not with diligent responsibility harvest grain for the garner of future days: " but how can He [ in this case the poet himself] expect that others should / Blind for him, sow for him, and at his call / Love him; who for himself will take no heed at all?" the poet thinks of himself as poet, one endowed with his own privileged, joyous place in life, there comes to his mind the names of Thomas Chatteron and Robert Burns, poets in the English tradition that Wordsworth would admire. The association that he makes of himself with them is at one and the same time joyous and imminent: we poets in our use begin in gladness;/ but thereof come in the end despondency and madness." The universal joy of the poet's life is contemplated in range of potential sorrow.

The beginning of stanza 8 marks a turning point in the poem. From this juncture to the end, the poet will tell how he learned what we find in the title, resolution and independence, and he learns significantly from a wanderer, a man who has subsisted on the gathering of leeches, a man who is now a beggar. As the poet thinks his " untoward thoughts" about life and struggles with all their depressing suggestions, he meets in a lovely place " beside a pool bare to the eye of heaven," a solitary man, the poet says" the oldest man he seemed that ever wore grey hairs." The poet interprets his meeting with him to be verily a gift of Devine Grace. Stanza nine is Wordsworth's long simile for the old solitary. The purpose of the simile is to describe the leech gatherer as alive but almost not alive. Wordsworth compares him to " a huge stone…/ couched on the bald top of an eminence," and to " a sea- beast crawled forth" through using the sea beast as simile for the stone. The old man is virtually one with the scene amidst which he sits; he has very nearly become one with nature: " motionless as a cloud the old man stood, / that hearth not the loud winds when they call…." The encounter reveals to the poet a man of great age, bent double, " feet and head / coming together in life's pilgrimage…." He looks as if he might be made taut in his bent posture by the tight strain of some past suffering, rage, or sickness. The poet is picturing him as very nearly supernatural, at least somehow beyond the usual scope of human experience: he seemed to bear " a more than human weight…."

In stanzas 12- 15, the old man finally moves. The poet sees him stir the waters by which he stands and then looks with fixed scrutiny into the pond, " which he conned , / as if he had been reading in a book…." The poet greets him, and the old man makes a gentle answer, " in courteous speech which forth he slowly drew…." Wordsworth uses the whole of stanza fourteen to describe his speech, " lofty utterance," " stately speech." In lines 88 and 89, the poet asks him what his occupation is, and suggests that the place in which he dwells may be too lonely for such a person as he. The old man identifies his work as leech- gathering; this is why he is in such a lonely place. He must, " being old and poor," finds his subsistence here, though the work may be " hazardous and wearisome." He depends on God's Providence to help him find lodging. But in all, he can be sure that he gains " an honest maintenance," however much he may have to roam " from pond to pond… from moor to moor."

In lines106-119, the poet's responses to the old leech-gatherer are told. While the old man had been answering his question about employment and placement in so lonely a setting, the poet becomes absorbed in the strange aspects of him who speaks. He loses the detail of answer the leech-gatherer is making; he cannot divide his words one from another. Lines 109-112 contain the essence of the poet's articulation of his feelings. They should be read carefully and compared to other passages in Wordsworth's poetry where he attempts to give voice to experience that is very close to mystical absorption. Observe here that the poet finds himself absorbed in the being of the solitary:

And the whole body of the man did seem

Like one whom I had met with in a dream;

Or like a man from some far region sent,

To give me human strength, by apt admonishment.

But the poet's dejection returns. He thinks again the heavy thoughts of fear, of resistant, recalcitrant, " cold, pain, and labour, and all fleshly ills," and of those poets who have been mighty, but who have died in misery. He yearns to find some message of strength and hope in the leech-gather's words, so he asks again, " ' how is it that you live, and what is it you do? "'

In lines120-126, the leech-gatherer repeats the nature of his work, but he adds that whereas he once could gather the object of his industry easily, he now because of the growing scarcity of leeches must travel more extensively- still he perseveres.

In lines127-133, the poet relates more of his private, unspoken response to the old Man. Against it happens that his mind wanders, as in stanza 16, while the leech-gatherer is answering his question. The poet pictures him as even more a solitary than he is in his present state; the poet's imagination working on the figure before him makes of the wandering solitary very nearly a transcendent being, silent and eternal: " In my mind's eye (the poet affirms) I seemed to see him pace / About the weary moors continually, / wandering about alone and silently." The poet is troubled by his own imaginative responses to the Man before him, but not troubled in a bad sense. This is the ministry of fear that we find so often in Wordsworth's work.

In lines 134-140, the leech-gatherer's resolution and independence is obvious to the poet in the way he moves from economically precarious condition to more cheerful utterances. The old Man before the poet is obviously a person of firm mind, however decrepit he might in appearance seem. He remains in the midst of whatever misfortune the society of man or isolation with the bare elements bearing him, a person of kind demeanor and stately bearing. The poet compares himself to the leech-gatherer and scorns himself for his dejection. He takes the old Man into his memory as an another point for future days and asks that God will help him to preserve what he has learnt: " 'God,' said I, be my help and stay secure; I'll think of the leech-gatherer on the lonely moor!' "

As suggested in other places in this study, most of Wordsworth's solitaries live as a part of the nature in which they move. There is the effect in this poem of the leech-gatherer going in and out of nature; the poet is for a time aware of him as a person confronting him face-to-face, but then he loses touch with him, as if he had blended back into the nature out of which he had momentarily stepped. One might profitably compare stanza sixteen, where Wordsworth speaks of the leech-gatherer as coming to him as if out of dream, which the Simplon Pass episode in Book Sixth of The Prelude. About line 600 of that book Wordsworth speaks of an imaginative experience in the following terms:

in such strength

of usurpation, when the light of sense

Goes out, but with a flash that has revealed

The invisible world, doth greatness make abode,

There harbours… .

Wordsworth's light of sense near to going out at least twice while he is talking to the leech-gatherer. One may also interestingly compare Wordsworth's responses to the vision on Mount Snowdon in Book Fourteenth of The Prelude with his experiences while talking to the old Man he met on the moors. He certainly intends for the reader to be impressed with the leech-gatherer's insistence on survival, survival that comes to him, we feel, to great degree because of a sheer act of will. Again, as with many of Wordsworth's solitaries, courage is presented as with many of Wordsworth's solitaries, courage is presented as the capacity to endure. There is a notable difference, however, between the courage of Michael and the courage of the leech-gatherer; never being sure he will find them, as she has been to Michael, who, though his farm is eventually lost after his death to owners outside his family, can live the total of his years on land that has been made his been own. Michael draws continual sustenance more from his own deep wells of unyielding fortitude. There is an obvious contrast also in this regard between the leech-gatherer and the Old Cumberland Beggar. The leech-gatherer accepts housing from those who will help him, but he does not have the regularity of affection and acts of kindness that the persons in the community of the Old Cumberland Beggar an area of nature in which he can live and die, in which he can make his home, Those who care for him are almost neighbors to him. The leech-gatherer is much more thrown on his own resources. It is in this that the poet learns his greatest lesson from him.

There is in the encounter between the poet and the leech-gatherer the work of Providence. Wordsworth seems to say in the poem (and in the letter he wrote about the poet) that this old Man was sent to him for his own rehabilitation. This may seem in some ears to be very close to blaspheming the preciously human, that one human being would be so sacrified fro the instruction and welfare of another. But the rediscovery of stability and hope in the midst of dejection for the poet who writes the poem is certainly the direction of things from the early stanza of the poem, where the glory of the natural surroundings seem to be functioning expressly for the poet's interesting. The hare that leaps joyfully through the first five stanza of the poem (mentioned three times in the five stanzas, in the second, third, and fifth) becomes in a way emblematic of the poet's life. The hare is also a servant of the benignant Grace of God, bringing to the poet reminders that he is "…such a happy child of earth… ." There may be in the background the biblical records of God's directly expressed mercy for man, even as incursions that cut with the particularity of biographical facts. But the leach- gatherer comes not so much in the mood and manner of historical encounter as he comes in the form of nature's extension of herself, ministering through an agency that is close to being more a natural agency than a human one.

With regard to the language of the poem, Wordsworth is working with a seven- line stanza or rhyme royal. The longer last line has the effect of slowing down the narrative and giving more time to the reader for consideration. Wordsworth's highly conscious artistry can be seen in his careful use of similes that describe the old man of the poem. The stone and the sea- beast of stanza nine, and the cloud in stanza eleven convey a sense of life that is highly worthy of the word.

On the subject of the language of the poem, one may question whether the diction that the poet attributes to the leach- gatherer is " a selection of language really used by men…." In stanza fourteen, the old man's speech is described as " choice words and measured phrase, above the reach / of ordinary men…."

Wordsworth as a narrative poet has most of his characters as active, persons committed to action. He consistently draws his characters so that they are easily recognizable as human beings. They are usually three- dimensional characters that have definite features. For all of his shared identity with nature_ which is to a very great degree_ we still meet the leach- gatherer as man, not as thing. Stanza ten and eleven are examples of Wordsworth's ability to create character in a relatively few lines; in this he shares a fame that is owned by only a few artists. The leach- gatherer is easily visualized, with his body bent double, "propped, limbs, body, and pale face. / upon a long grey stuff of shaven wood… ." such vivid character drawing is necessary to give the old man the action of personality that he has, an action essential to his being for the poet a model of resolution and independence. Wordsworth's characters are real because we can think of them as human beings. However heroic the leach- gatherer may be, his heroism does not take him beyond the limits of the human. We have in him no Achilles. His heroism is the kind that can be attained by human beings we know and meet. Generally Wordsworth's character's are real because we can think of them as human beings. The leach- gatherer shares much more with Abraham than with Achilles.