“I wanted to expand my vocabulary of dance by exploring its spirit and enjoying the art without being judgmental,” says Padmini Ravi, the Bengaluru-based dancer. At Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, where she performed for the Saarasalaya festival, the audience was taken by surprise when M.K.Thyagaraja Bhagavathar’s famous song ‘Manmatha Leelaiyai Vendrar Undo’ from the film Haridas started playing as the curtains went up. Another surprise was in store, when Padmini chose this song to present as an introductory piece.
“As a disciple of K.J. Sarasa, who had carried forward the legacy of the Vazhuvoor bani, I wanted to pay tribute to Vazhuvoor Ramiah Pillai, the choreographer of this song. I reworked it to suit my style but in certain segments kept the original choreography from the film intact to highlight the beauty of this master’s movements,” she says.
Hindi Varnam
The need to reach out to a cosmopolitan audience in Bengaluru resulted in the conceptualisation of a varnam in Hindi. About presenting this ragamalika, Adi tala varnam in Chennai, she says, “Krishna and his various stories have been dealt with in detail in so many songs, I wanted to look at his persona as a man who lived every second of his life with beautiful women and my student Ajay Vishwanathan wrote the lyrics to reflect these ideas.”
Krishna’s love for the first beautiful woman, Yasoda, and the mother-son relationship depicted in the first segment, and shown as the prankster and mischievous friend in the second segment were delightful sequences.
His dalliance with the attractive gopis had a strong feminine point of view, emphasising Radha’s importance as an equal partner. The nritta interludes in the varnam was appealing, not because of Padmini’s mastery in perfection of lines, postures or rhythm, but in the play of sensuousness that came with her languorous movements and facial expressions, even as the feet were responding to the rhythmic sollukattus.
“My interactions with Dr. Padma Subrahmanyam and Saroj Khan during the making of the film Shringaram, opened my eyes to the power of communicative choreography. I realised that a lot of film dance movements have also evolved from the codifications of Natya Sastra. I started to look at movements more as an expression of joy, which can connect with the audience, rather than being clinical, concentrating on perfection and virtuosity. My dance now is a journey of experiencing ananda,” says Padmini.
The two abhinaya-oriented songs that followed, succeeded in communicating this joy to the rasikas. ‘Parulanna Mata ‘ the javali in Kapi was the ‘piece de resistance’ of the performance. Exploring the character of the heroine as a samanya nayika, the dancer showed maturity in abhinaya.
Every little detail such as pressing his feet, giving him the betel leaf, trying to convince him of her true love and then rushing to let her lover out, made an impact. Padmini’s performance gave an insight into the approach to abhinaya from a bygone period, expressing the joy of dancing without taking a moralistic stance.
