MUSIC ACADEMY
Sparkling show of style
RUPA SRIKANTH
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There was never a dull moment in Alarmel Valli’s performance.
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Photo: V. Ganesan.
Peppy and energetic: Alarmel Valli.
Dressed in an unusual off-white silk and gold brocade dance costume, Alarmel Valli seemed so petite that one would have thought she would be lost in the enormous Music Academy stage. But one had not accounted for her presence — it is so ‘big’ that it fills the space easily.
Valli is one of the most consistent performers on the Indian art scene. She was the first of a generation of dancers that revelled in the physicality of dance and was a beacon to many younger dancers who aspired to become a ‘world-famous Valli.’ It is remarkable that she has maintained the same energy, the same fitness and peppy style for three decades or more.
Valli’s performance at the Music Academy Dance Festival inaugural was a sparkling show of speed, rhythm and movement. Her fitness was there for all to see as she performed or rather sailed across the stage with nonchalance.
There was never a dull moment with Valli using the aerial and the grounded routes to echo every beat with accuracy and style. She had highly skilled accompanists in C. K. Vasudevan (nattuvangam) and Sakthivel Muruganandam (mridangam) who buoyed her energetic effort.
From the first theermanam that was in a significant madhya laya, she attacked each adavu with gusto. If the pallavi was in a faster tempo, one can imagine how the charanam section would have been.
Despite the speed, the swarams were beautifully visualised while her jumps in the arudis, both for the swara and sahitya sections, added to the momentum and dazzle.
Valli was as fresh in the finishing fast-paced ‘Swaralaya’ (Abhogi, Adi, Prema Ramamoorthy), as she was in the opening ‘Shakthi Vandana’.
The same jauntiness that one sees in Valli’s nritta resurfaced in the heroine. In the padavarnam, (‘Mohamana,’ Bhairavi, Rupaka, Ponniah Pillai), Valli’s charming heroine yearns for her beloved but is never bogged down by his indifference.
The light-hearted sthayi did not help to reinforce the mood and without the Tiruvarur sthala purana or Tyagesa in the re-choreographed padavarnam (dedicated to Guru Subbaraya Pillai), the intensity of the lyrics was not the same.
There were instances such as Siva’s procession that were well-etched but the expressional segments were sometimes swept away in the overall momentum.
One saw again the jaunty nayika in the padam (‘Yarukkakilum Bhayama,’ Begada, Misra Chapu, Subbarama Iyer) in which the confident heroine is not afraid to flaunt her love in public. Valli had no time to perform the pieces she had set out to do, as the inauguration ceremony had overrun the time schedule.
This was a pity because it did not give her an opportunity to come out of the skin of the ‘jaunty heroine’ all evening. To that extent it was not a fulfilling show.
There was one more setback and that was Latha Ramchand’s (vocal) uneven form.
This experienced singer had a recalcitrant voice and her musicality suffered though Ranjani Arun (violin) and Ramakrishna (flute) did their best.
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