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PHOTO: M. VEDHAN

A VALIANT EFFORT Aniruddha Knight, grandson of Balasaraswati

Doing door-to-door selling of five-rupee tickets, Kapila emotionally recollected the 60-foot by 40-foot Leningrad stage where Maya Plisetzkaya and troupe had danced with “one Bala to follow”, and how after the show Dame Margot Fonteyn wonderingly running her hand down the length of Bala’s arm had exclaimed, “Kapila, I thought I was a dancer”.

Nobody expected a Bala act from Aniruddha, for the genius of Bala’s abhinaya that fetched tears to the most uninitiated eyes arose from manodharma which cannot be taught, ever remaining a treasured part of cultural memory. Aniruddha will always be an important link in the historical dance chain taking one back to its traditional location in the devadasi stronghold. In an unconventional pyjama/short kurta getup with an oddiyanam round the waist, Aniruddha, while living in the West, is the inheritor of the legacy of an illustrious musical/Bharatanatyam family.

The Bala inheritance shone in the repertoire and music of the evening. The meditative tanpura strains (no sruti box or electronic drone) accompanied the classical weight, stately pace and lack of ostentatious virtuosity of the Dhanammal/Mukta style of singing by Saraswathy Sanakaranarayanan, with the beautifully blended tones of daughter Usha Shivakumar’s voice. There was R. Suresh’s nattuvangam, clean and never artificially hyped, T.R. Moorthy’s rich flute accompaniment in the style of Vishwa (Bala’s brother) and the aesthetics of the muted tones of Douglas Knight’s mridangam which lent so much savoured mood without drawing attention to itself. Also a singing highlight was Usha’s slow spun magic requiring phenomenal breath control in holding each moment in the Nadanamakriya Kshetrayya Padam “Paiyada Paimeda” the nayika bemoaning her present forsaken state, recollecting the old days when she was the apple of the husband’s eye.

Bharatanatyam by traditional dancers had a naturalness, full of the charming “talukku, kulukku” of the body and ‘nadai’. But Aniruddha’s minute torso genuflexions distort the dance line.

In the Bhairavi varnam “Mohamana en meedu” the improvised interpretative passages followed the Bala convention, though the spark was lacking. The smitten nayika offering body and soul to Lord Tyagesa in the line “Bhoga Tyagesa Anubhogam seyya vaa” came off the best. For the rest, this critic found the abhinaya, while having a sthayi bhava, limited in mukhabhinaya. What was noteworthy was the tight, crisp jati patterns – the khandam or a sankeernam full of aesthetic quality in the rhythmic geometry of conceptualising.

“Suddha Paitiyakkaran Gangadharan” (“Absolutely mad, this Gangadharan”) Parvati’s mother criticises Shiva, wanting to know what her daughter saw in such a character to fall in love in the Kalyani padam “Ethai kandu icchai kondai magale”. It was nice to hear the dancer’s clear-voiced singing while dancing — a lost art today. More of this would be welcome. The Athana, Ghanam Krishnaiyer “Tiruvottriyur Tyagarajan” revived memories of Bala in soulful singing.

The fine old-fashioned movement korvais and patterning of the tillana in Mandari was wonderful to see, for very often today, the tillana movements look much like other nritta items.

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