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Photos: M. Karunakaran

Shot in the arm: Nala Charitam, a Kathakali performance.

The extract chosen for the three-hour performance began with Narada’s description of Princess Damayanti to Nala and carried on to the point where the golden swan takes Nala’s message of love to her. Guru Sadanam Balakrishnan’s portrayal of Nala was poetry itself. The anguish of the separated lover, his little hesitations, his desperation, all came out by turns like the rising waves of the ocean. Left alone after being fired up by Rishi Narada over the charms of Damayanti, his presentation was a soliloquy in dance.

Now thinking of Damayanti’s beauty and fame, now describing his own state, he brought to mind the title of an anthology of short stories, “The Expanded Moment.” If an expanded moment is an apt definition for a short story, it is even more apt for a padam. And the veteran artist expanded each facet of thought into a gem of a moment. Madavur Vasudevan Nair as the swan (Hamsam) presented a feisty picture, providing a foil to the sentimental Nala and later Damayanti.

In the latter half, Damayanti appeared with her sakhis. Kalakshetra Director Leela Samson in a pure Kathakali role was in a way the surprise package of the evening.

An immaculate Bharatanatyam dancer, she is known for her understated abhinaya in Bharatanatyam, which is a world apart from the precise, highly stylised and relatively more overt expressional vocabulary of Kathakali. However, she took care to maintain the style and came across with grace and charm.

The sakhis and Damayanti made aesthetic groupings. At times one was reminded of Kalakshetra founder Rukmini Devi Arundale’s ballets, in which the group formations and female roles are based largely on Bharatanatyam.

This was particularly apparent in the sakhis’ interactions with Damayanti and with each other, during which they sometimes lapsed into expressional modes and postures of Bharatanatyam.

As lapses go, this would be considered a small one, and they deserve all credit for clearly working so hard on the production. The shining standards of nritta, the synchronisation, the sthayi bhava, all were in place.

Guru Balakrishnan, who has contributed to putting Kathakali on the world map through his decades of directing and performing with New Delhi’s International Centre for Kathakali, has done good work with the Kalakshetra Repertory.

Decades ago, Kathakali was a part of the curriculum of Kalakshetra’s senior students, but in later years this fizzled out. If Guru Balakrishnan has been asked to train students, it is a welcome development.

It is a pity Kalakshetra has dispensed with printing a brochure for the festival. This publication not only has souvenir and documentation value, it provides a synopsis and credits. Particularly in the case of Kathakali, with which everyone in the audience is not well versed, an explanation read out at the beginning of a three-hour show is not enough.

Vocals by Kalanilayam Unnikrishnan and Kalamandalam Rajesh Menon, backed by chenda played by Kalamandalam Unnikrishnan, and maddalam by Kalamandalam Babu Kuttan, created the right ambience.

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