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Thrilling to the end

‘Natya Pravaham’ was indeed a delightful flow of music and dance. Gudipoodi Srihari

Fine Fusion Rajeshwari Sainath with daughter Vaishnavi

These days are also meant for experiments in pure dance art to attract young audience to watch, enjoy and develop taste for what is real classical. As a first lesson in this effort, Rajeswari Sainath, a renowned Bharatanatyam artiste with many experi mental and devotional choreographic works to her credit, came out with a two–in-one show of Bharatanatyam at Ravindra Bharati under the aegis of Chaitanya Art Theatres. The content that aroused our curiosity was in fact the second part of her show, which had an interesting title to the programme – ‘Natya Pravaham’. This means a flow of dance and it had all the potential of both a ballet and a solo. Solo because the content that went through by the 27 dancing girls, were devotional songs penned by spiritual guru Ganapathi Satchidananda of Mysore on various gods and goddesses. They had the structure of Bhajans in general. But the composing and orchestration work involved some great names of Tamil and Malayalam cinemas’ music composers and singers Sarat, Ramesh Vinayagam and so on. The compositions were done under the direction of the renowned musicologist and percussion maestro Karaikkudi Mani. These songs were said to be part of a 50-song album produced by Karaikkudi Mani. The association of his very name to the making of a CD in itself is proof enough of its rhythmic and musical strength, yielding well to Bharatanatyam style. When the dancers were presenting these numbers forming into sub-groups of five or six, for each song, the inbuilt choreographic excellence was noticed in the intricate jatis providing us a rare thrill unlike those in jazz or pop. This is the element that attracts the genius of the listener unexposed to the classical idiom. It wa s a flow of continuous rendition. All the dancers appeared to have been well trained and rehearsed. The main dancers of the evening Guru Rajeswari Sainath and her teenage daughter Vaishnavi also formed part of this fusion show of music and dance. Each devotional lyric appears to have lasted about three to four minutes, with a smooth change from one song into another. And the orchestral support was simply thrilling.

The group

Rajeswari Sainath and her daughter opened the evening’s show with a traditional Bharatanatyam show with live support of vocalists and orchestra. It began with Saranu Siddhi Vinayaka of Purandaradasa in Hamir Kaly ani, presented by Rajeswari with perfect angikabhinaya and nrutta display. The dominating aspect of any Bharatanatyam show has always been a varnam and Rajeswari came out with a rare Valajiraga Pada Varnam Devi Kamakshi Karuninchavamma penned by T.R. Radhakrishnan, a well known lyric writer. This piece was particularly notable for the way Rajeswari invested all her experiences in not only dancing through various jati patterns but also striking the postures of Devi Idols at different places – Kamakshi, Meenakshi, Visalakshi, Abhirami, Akhilandeswari-each was punctuated with beautiful jatis. Vaishnavi has the req uisite body culture and language and has already mastered the techniques of the art. A javali in Farazu, Cheli Nenettu Sahintune depicting the Srungara Nayaki, who is awaiting he r hero and a Sindhu Bhairavi tillana went to her share, which gave her opportunity to display her strength in Nritta, Nritya and Abhinaya. These dancers had a fine company of a rich orchestral and vocal support that included vocalist A. Bhagavatarini of Chennai, disciple of D.K. Pattammal and mridangist Nagai Narayanan also of Chennai and Nattuvanar Srinivas. Siva on violin, Venkatesh on flute and Srikanth on tabla lent support.