Absorbing contest
LEELA VENKATARAMAN
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A dancer, a singer and some poets came together for impromptu creativity. Elsewhere, the Republic of Azerbaijan showcased enticing cultural facets.
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TAKING UP THE CHALLENGE Kanaka Srinivasan gave a polished performance at New Delhi's IIC.
Time-bound, structured dance presentations being the mode of the day, it is not often one witnesses an evening of spontaneous expression of poetry, with both dancer and vocalist discovering the poetic content for the occasion just a little before the performance. At the Habitat, an HCL Concert evening, in an unusual coming together of dancer, singer and poets, featured senior Bharatanatyam dancer Kanaka Srinivasan, versatile Carnatic music exponent O.S. Arun and litterateurs including Hindi poet Ashok Vajpeyi, retired bureaucrat scholar M. Varadarajan and Tamil poet Kanimozhi.
If Kanaka is one of the few dancers able to take up the challenge of on-the-spot abhinaya, she was partnered by Arun's brilliantly inspired singing.
In an absorbing contest, it was clear how the entry point for all dance and music creativity lies in the artiste's familiarity with the word and its overtones. And so not surprisingly, it was Varadarajan's Tamil/Sanskrit poetry, direct in its imagery, that came off the best in both music and gestural interpretation. Whether it was the pushpanjali invocation in Hamsanadam with "Mooshika vahana modaka priya" or a portrayal of idiosyncratic Shiva with his accoutrements, or a comparison between Kanda (Kumara), who taught his own father the secrets of the Pranava Mantra, and Kanna (Krishna) who through Arjuna bestowed on mankind the philosophy of the Gita — the last set to Dharmawati sung with musical punctuations by Arun — Kanaka's abhinaya elaborations responded through narrative episodic sancharis.
Abstract poems
Trickier were the abstract poems by Vajpeyi in the Hindi language not common to Bharatanatyam. In addition, the dancer was handicapped by Arun's need to refer to the script he was unfamiliar with, thereby not enabling the singer to gauge the times a line is sung by looking at the dancer. Importantly, the layers of meaning lying between words in poetry demand long periods of reflection, for hidden messages being revealed like the petals of a flower, opening out one by one. With this luxury denied, during such spontaneous expression, much of the abhinaya became a direct word-to-gesture translation, thereby losing out on subtleties. As in the first poem on a place for love ("Usne apne prem ke liye jagah banayi") and in "Vah aa rahi hai" in which the very obvious nayika/nayak perception did not quite catch the tone of the abstraction of stars and sky as canopy, and even the "Ritusamhar" which is more than just spring as interpreted by the dancer.
Again the "bird of endless promise" in the virahotkanthita poem in the falling leaves, the full-blown spring (bhare vasant) and the bhari dhoop underlined the endless wait through seasons, and more elaborations were possible round each of these images. So too, Kanimozhi's first Tamil poem "Ennai tedi tedi", given a sringar interpretation, was a search for lost, groping self-identity — a difficult theme for the visual medium of dance. But the poem on needless fears instilled into the mind from childhood, life guided more by milestones by obedience than intelligence, sung evocatively in Desh by Arun, found the dancer in greater flow. The silence of the poetry on nature, where breezes ruffle the hair and the solitary bee has nobody to put it to sleep (the singer switching over to Neelambari from Bihag evoking the tone of a lullaby) yielded scope for gestural imagery.
More such manodharma art than rehearsed slickness would create interesting poet/musician/dancer interaction.
Regaling fare
ICCR's evening of music and dance from Azerbaijan mounted at the Kamani in association with the Embassy of the Republic of Azerbaijan, offered regaling fare. The dances from the Caucasus region are not new to audiences in India. The exotic glitter of costume and grace of the female dancers, and twinkle-toed, supreme agility of the male dancers from the State Dance Consort, while most entertaining, could not rival the `Mugham' musical heritage of traditional Azerbaijani culture, declared in 2003 as a "Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage of the World" by UNESCO. The alap-like raga improvisations by a male and female singing pair, Arzu Aliyeva and Babek Niffftaliyev, with the gamaks and graces in the music were exhilarating. Unbeatable for melody and creative elaborations was the music of Aghajebrayil Abasaliyev on the kamancha, and providing support was Malik Mansura on the tar.
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