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Sonal Mansingh says she is a clown and in a mood to play
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Photo: Murali kumar k.
Different strokes Sonal Mansingh
The dull, cloudy weather was no dampener for Sonal Mansingh’s exuberant spirits. A bright sari, with red lipstick and bindi, looked quite the goddess of dance. And she is in the mood to play. “I am a clown and those around me are always in splits,” she giggles. For Sonal, who ran away from home to learn Bharatanatya, “Dance is a way of life for me. My performances are always works in progress.”
Sonal describes herself as “an enthusiastic teacher. Today, if a teacher hits a student, she will have a case slapped on her. I’ve been slapped by Kelu Babu just because I fell asleep at 2 a.m. waiting for him to come and teach me. I was a Padma Bhushan awardee at that time.
But that did not make any difference to him or to me. I still fell at his feet and endured his harsh treatment and he still was my teacher.” When did the dancer become a social activist? “Social activism happened in Natya Shastra when Bharata begins his story about the Samudra Manthana.
The message is about the churning of life; about churning and drinking poison before you can get to some place. In the past performers had liberty to satirise kings. Dance and social activism are not separate,”says Sonal who believes that schools should include performing arts into their curriculum.
Of her latest performance set to film tunes, she says: “The genre does not matter as long as there is content. Hari Prasad Chaurasia is a classical musician who has also done contemporary music.
There comes a point when dance overtakes life. My logic was if film songs portray the same feelings , can they be interpreted by a classical dancer? Is there a difference in the way Helen and Sonal interpret the dance? I thought, why not use what is familiar as a window to give a glimpse of the classical world? And dance is not long faced. Even the Upanishads are full of funny stories.”
SHILPA SEBASTIAN. R
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