Duo that created magic

IT IS a rare occurrence in Chennai and needs to be recorded. An entire audience standing up and clapping for a long, long time... Chennaiites are not known to applaud at the end of a performance. Their appreciation is generally silent and non-verbal. But at the end of the ``An Encounter of the East and the West'' with Aruna Sairam and Dominique Vellard, the audience kept clapping. And at the end of that long, standing ovation, Ranvir Shah, co-artistic director of The Other Festival did a very wise thing. He went up on stage and announced that there would be no audience-artiste inferface. The audience agreed with him that there was no need for an interface since the programme was so good.

It was a perfect evening. An audience that slowly filled the Museum Theatre and the soft lighting that made the exquisite carpet that provided the backdrop glow. It reminded one of the ``Ratnakambali'' that one has read about in folktales in childhood. The finale to The Other Festival proved that it was canonic and Apollonian and would stand the test of time. Centuries of contribution to an art form by thousands of artistes have created genres that allow the artistes to continue it and take risks and prove their modernity by deep individual expressions within the traditions.Aruna Sairam and Dominique Vellard produced an inspiring and fascinating concert of liturgical chants and devotional songs seeking a correspondence in the modes, texts, impressions and moods of the two different traditions of Georgian chants, Renaissance polyphony and Carnatic music. Accompanied by nothing but a tanpura and with wonderful diction and clear sruti and melody the two created magic. They insisted that it was not fusion music but an encounter and a dialogue. This encounter enchanted the audience.Earlier, in The Other Festival, we had seen ``Post Modern'', by Sapphire Dance Creations from Calcutta. Their simplicity and honesty showed through their dance but the music was of poor quality and somehow did not fit in. If they had worked with less props and silence, their performance would have been one of the peaks of the festival.``A portrait of Paradise'', a monologue by Deesh Mariwala dramatising the interrogation of a rich man, accused of an unnamed crime, who questions the ethics of society and its perception of right and wrong, needed extreme concentration for one to hang on to the delivery of the monologue that had no modulation.

The other programmes featured in the festival were a multi- cultural band of Vibration Society from Auroville, ``Dag'' a dance by Peter Chin from Toronto, Kaveri Lalchand of Chennai with her monologue and ``One Woman - A Bridge'' a dance piece by Susan McNaughton from Canada. All performed with sincerity.

The Other Festival has come to stay almost as a mainstream festival before the cultural season in Chennai. It provides the elite with the opportunity to witness new works by artistes who have alternative ideas to share. But the truly modern viewer is one who can sit through and enjoy a Peter Chin performance and then be seen equally engrossed in a Music Academy performance of pure classical music. The Other Festival proves that everything has a place and that everything is valid in art expressions. The knowledgeable have only information while the uninformed rasika gets touched by the work.

V. R. DEVIKA

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