A showcase of dance traditions
SHYAMHARI CHAKRA
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Nritya Sangam was a confluence of dances, much to the delight of connoisseurs.
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Class apart Meernanda Borthakur and Kala Krishna.
In the last leg of the series of six dance festivals across the country, Sangeet Natak Akademi, the national academy of performing arts, New Delhi, hosted Nritya Sangam at Rabindra Sadan in Kolkata last week. The four-day event showcased 14 establish
ed artistes of the nation who represented 13 Indian dance styles that included eight Indian classical dance traditions and five new emerging expressions — Andhra Natyam, Vilasini Natyam (both different interpretations of the Andhra devdasi tradition), Nangiarkoothu (Kerala), Gaudiya Nritya (Bengal) and experimental. The West Bengal State Music Academy and Kolkata-based Manipuri danseuse Priti Patel’s Anjika dance centre were the collaborators of the festivals.
For Andhra Natyam and its Hyderabad-based well-known exponent Kala Krishna who specialises in stree vesham (female impersonation), it was a rare moment of glory to conquer the hearts of connoisseurs of Kolkata. So spontaneous was the presentation of this 57-year-old artiste that the audience refused to believe that a man was staging the character of a woman. What makes this gifted artiste unique is his minimum usage of miming and movements, with intense expressions.
The other dancer who left an indelible mark on the audience was Kalamandalam Shylaja, the Nangiarkoothu exponent from Kerala, who staged her own choreographic composition Parvati parinayam (wedding of goddess Parvati with Lord Shiva). This 2,500 year-old classical Sanskrit theatre tradition, an exclusive domain of women, demands the highest degree of concentration and facial expression to communicate the story in the absence of any lyrics. And Shylaja, whom even the queens of abhinaya would envy, executed it with exceptional brilliance.
Find of the festival
The find of the festival was Assam’s young Sattriya dancer Meernanda Borthakur who was the youngest participant in the event that was meant for senior, acclaimed dancers. A doctor by profession, this disciple of the Jatin Goswami is emerging as a future face of Sattriya that requires well-groomed artistes like her to present the form beyond Assam.
New Delhi’s dancer-choreographer Navtej Singh Johar is known for scripting a new dance vocabulary in contemporary and experimental dance in India today. His presentation proved how poignantly a traditional tale can be transmitted to the audience without traditional mudras and bhangis and how mythical characters can be replaced with metaphors.
Similarly, Chennai-based Mohiniattam dancer Gopika Varma was intelligent enough to impress her non-Malayalee audience with use of Hindi songs to her compositions. She even showed how an intensely personal experience — she lost her both parents recently and moved to Kashi to reflect on life and death — can be convincingly shared with the audience through traditional dance idioms.
Delhi-based Kathak dancer and teacher Harish Gangani deserves a special mention for his authentic presentation of the techniques of the Jeypore gharana. The other Kathak dancer featured in the festival was Kolkata’s Madhumita Roy.
Hyderabad-based dancer Anupama Kylash represented Vilasini Natyam, an interpretation of the devdasi tradition of Andhra Pradesh that her guru and Kuchipudi exponent Swapna Sundari has undertaken in recent years. She also presented a lecture-demonstration on the following day when Kala Krishna had a similar presentation on Andhra Natyam. Kolkata’s Mahua Mukherjee, who claims that Gaudiya Nritya is a classical dance tradition that belongs to Bengal, staged her solo recital and presented a lecture-demonstration along with her disciples.
Two Chennai-based established artistes — Sailaja (Kuchipudi) and Revathi Ramachandran (Bharatanatyam) — put up energetic performances during the festival but both lacked the desired stage presence. They failed to gauge the mood of the audience who are not used to presentations of prolonged recitals of traditional repertoire.
Manipuri dancers N.Ajit Singh and O Debola Devi from Imphal who staged the lone duet dance performance in the festival had a lacklustre recital. The most disappointing recital of the festival was Odissi by Anandi Ramachandran from Mumbai whose musicians made a mess of the presentations.
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