IT was three years ago that photographer Shirish Shete held the exhibition Dancing Maidens. Now he’s come out with a glossy coffee-table book titled after the show. A set of gorgeous black and white photographs that capture the essence and joy of a lavni dancer on stage, coupled with some colour photographs that capture vignettes of their life. “It was a 10-year project following the travelling troupes of tamashawalis getting into their daily routine, till I was the fly on the wall that they didn’t notice but who was watching them with my lens trained,” says Shete.

Lavni, a traditional form of Marathi folk performance that is both witty and seductive, no longer has the audience it once did, which is the case for many of our live performance traditions. As Prakash Khandge points out, “Reference to over 700-year-old rich art of tamasha and lavni are found in devotional poetry of Sant Tukaram.

Today, it is influenced by other entertainment forms like cinema and television”. Shete’s book is thus an important chronicler since it documents what may well become a dying tradition.

Vijaya Mehta, the executive director of the National Centre of the Performing

Arts (NCPA), has bought some of the prints and made them part of the permanent collection at the complex. Despite this nostalgia, Shete reveals that it was not easy to fund the project.

“Both the book and the show are non-funded personal initiatives because of my love for the art form. It was not possible to come by any funding,” says Shete who was bitten by the lavni bug in 1998 when he saw his first tamasha performance in at the Y B Chavan Centre.

The fascination with lavni dancers moves beyond their craft, and Shete’s text hints that the dancers like had powerful politicos as their admirers and earned enough to float their own troupe. Besides the big shows in the city, Shete’s lens also follow the women and their troupe to smaller performances in villages around Maharashtra, where it is the highlight of the annual village yatra (fair).

The book also provides one with information about the caste divisions that operate within a troupe. While the Brahmins were the lyricists, it was the Harijans who would sing, play and perform. The village barber would do makeup while the non-Brahmin priest was usually the comedian.

Predictably a whole section is dedicated to the shringar of a lavni dancer, however there is also a chapter of photographs that capture the cooks, backstage crew and truck drivers who form an important part of the troupe.

The book is available at all major book stores after September 17, for Rs 970.