From metaphysical to the physical
LEELA VENKATARAMAN
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A choreographic presentation based on Tagore's Gitanjali and a Bharatanatyam solo were the highlights of the week.
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Photo: Shiv Kumar Pushpakar
POWER IN PLURAL A scene from `Offerings' presented at the India Habitat Centre recently.
Translating inner self-interactions into space/time-charged dance movement is never easy. How does movement catch what taunts and tantalises the mind with supra-physical urgency? This is precisely the problem while dealing with the mysticism of Tagore's Gitanjali poems, which are hard to pin down through bodily images. And yet these immortal verses have provoked many a dancer's experimental urges in Bengal.
`Offerings', an English/Bengali Theatre/Dance expression based on selected Gitanjali poems, was presented by Sruti Performing Troupe, Kolkata, at Habitat's Stein auditorium on the first evening of Impresario India's two-day festival, paying homage to Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore on his death anniversary. Visualised by Sruti Banerjee, `Offerings' exults in a broad-based movement vocabulary influenced by several forms like Manipuri, Bharatanatyam, Chhau not excluding contemporary dance influences. The selected passages, deeply introspective, dilated at the metaphysical level on one's own identity and relationship with the Creator, with nature and with the country - Atma Sambhashana, Prakrti Sambhashana and Desha Sambhashana. Nowhere do the soaring poetic emotions translate into clear-cut visual images - Tagore's thoughts invariably above mundane everyday living. Sruti's choreographic vision blends group and solo dance expressions based on Rabindra Sangeet with a kind of gestural interpretation and attitudinising in a theatrical soliloquy style, to taped voice orations in English. The attempt is part of the choreographer's personal journey in searching for movement language aiding optimum communication.
The sense of continuity in an alternate Bengali/English song and speech narration while tricky was achieved without hiccups or intrusive jerks in the changeovers. Fair group understanding amongst the dancers and variety in rhythm and mood, with sequences showing joy, hope, pathos, uncertainty, yearning and search for that unknown divinity, dancers `tripping the light fantastic' or being weighed down with ponderous steppings, avoid a monochromatic tone to the work. But after a point, the treatment becomes too wordy with moments of silence lacking. Frozen cluster formations gave the message far more powerfully than the solo enacted passages. Pleasantly entertaining, the work however left no strong imprints on the mind. The Rabindra Sangeet on tape is well sung.
Bharatanatyam recital
Pratibha Prathisthan over the years has mounted several theme-based festivals, particularly in Karnataka, while rarely featuring Pratibha Prahlad's students in solo presentations. Shubha Patwardhan a long time disciple of Pratibha, in what seems like new-found seriousness of purpose, took the Habitat basement theatre stage in solo Bharatanatyam. An experienced, balanced team of musicians in Sriganesh (nattuvangam), Vidya Srinivasan (vocal), Shiv Kumar (mridangam) and Annadorai (violin) provided an evocative melodic backdrop for Shubha's recital. Away from the oft-rendered repertoire, Shubha's recital began with the mallari in Nattai, followed by a jatiswaram in Margahindolam, both choreographed by the late Guru Muttuswamy Pillai, under whom Shubha's teacher Pratibha trained. As often happens when the disciple steps beyond the vigilant overseeing eye of the guru, the dance unconsciously taking on the dancer's own individuality diluting the guru's original mould, what Shubha does now is in Pratibha Prahlad's style.
Except for the profiling of an adavu different from the frontal-aspected conventional mode or the breaking up of a two-handed movement into a single-handed one, the geometry in the below-the-waist stances and movement that Muttuswamy Pillai demanded was different. Shubha has a feel for rhythm. She, however, needs to overcome the tightness in the shoulder joints giving arm stretches a stiffness and aggressive tone.
The unusual item from Antahpura Geetagalu, D.V. Gundappa's "Abharana ninagethake?" in the raga Bilahari, inspired by a Halebid temple Madanika sculpture, was sensitively conceived by Pratibha, portraying the friend asking why the Madanika endowed with so much natural beauty needed ornamentation. The Lalgudi Jayaraman varnam in Shanmukhapriya "Devar munivar tozhum padam" which lends itself more to episodic treatment on Srinivasa of Tirupati, got to be a little tedious despite Shubha's histrionic talents, in the overdose of narrative sequences and stretched explanations. More movement variety was needed in the prolonged opening jati. Storytelling cuts out interpretative elaboration. Dharmapuri Subbarayar's padam "Sakhi Prana" portraying the vipralabdha bemoaning her deserted state, with the beloved with another woman, needed more restrained intensity.
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