Light feet, heavy thoughts
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Since the controversial days of the Festival of India in the U.S., Malavika Sarukkai has zoomed to the top as one of the country's most creative Bharatanatyam exponents. ANJANA RAJAN speaks to the dancer about her forthcoming programme in New Delhi.
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Malavika Sarukkai... expanding the repertoire. - Photo: H. Vibhu.
YOU COULDN'T really accuse Malavika Sarukkai of being immodest, only frank, when she says she is among the "top few" Bharatanatyam dancers in the country and aims to help the dance form be accepted as a serious art that is not mere entertainment, one that should be "looked into, not just looked at". While her words veer towards a certain condemnation of those who "trivialise" Bharatanatyam in the name of modern sensibilities, and she is all for "serious, creative" new choreography, she refuses to name anyone in the field who could qualify for even the latter category, preferring only to comment on her own work.
Currently in France, presumably holding audiences in thrall with her carefully thought-out and researched Bharatanatyam performances that exemplify contemporaneity within the classical mould, she is due to be back in New Delhi for a performance at the Baha'I House of Worship this Wednesday. Time flies for this busy dancer, no doubt. But it also stands and witnesses, it comes and goes in cycles. And her performance in Delhi this time is dedicated to time, or `Kala'.
While the programme includes some newly choreographed pieces and some she has done before, Malavika, who points out that she has been involved with dance for so long that she doesn't even remember - "20, 30 years, I've stopped counting" - considers her work always in the present tense. "Bharatanatyam is not just a style, it's a language, and it's in the present, a very living, very lived in, very experienced language," she says, confident that her programmes are accessible to a range of audiences.
Not entertainment
Her work, she avers, is "very strongly felt," and does not come into being "just like that". If her work is strong enough for college students to come back to her after a gap of months saying what an impact it had on them, she is sure, "It is not entertainment. Something happens, and you feel you are in the presence of something."
If people flock to see her, and she is able to bypass the pet grouse of Delhi's performers and organisers that it is hard to collect an audience, it is because "It's not just about my, me, myself. Classical art requires a much deeper level of - not performance, rather - experience of an artiste. Art is something which is meditated upon and then something happens," she says of the creative process.
"I am not one of those who feel suffocated by all the classicism," she clarifies. Her reason for creating new compositions is that "There is great scope for expansion, provided one does it with auchitya - a sense of what is appropriate."
For her part, she tries to handle the style with "a tentative approach, a curious approach, with humility." Though Malavika performs the usual Bharatanatyam repertoire too, she often finds new themes and poetry on which to base her choreography.
"My work is rooted in the sacred - a tree is sacred for me, space is sacred, a pebble could be sacred - but I work with this very classical alphabet. That's what I make my words and phrases with. But my energy is very contemporary, is very me and therefore, it remains in the present," explains this articulate dancer who has made lecture performances a way of life as part of her mission to gain for Bharatanatyam the dignity she feels is accorded only to classical music.
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Entertainment
Bangalore
Chennai and Tamil Nadu
Delhi
Hyderabad
Thiruvananthapuram
