Sri Rama Nataka Niketan: The abhinaya impact

The ballet presented through slokas from the epics was impactful and appealing

Students of Sri Rama Nataka Niketan

It was a delightful evening on the second day of the Annual Youth Festival of Dance staged at Keys High School, Secunderabad. Students of Sri Rama Nataka Niketan of guru V S Ramamoorthy and his daughter Guru Manjula Rama Swamy, presented a Bharatanatyam ballet. The celestial theme surrounding Krishna was a ballet presented by solo artistes which is why they called it ‘Ekapatra’ and ‘Eka sloka Ramayanam’. That was chaptered as ‘Shadaksharam’ saluting the six-headed Muruga in six ‘aksharas’.

The second artiste Satya Prasuna took stage to narrate the story of Ramayana in a single sloka described as ‘Eka Sloka Ramayanam’. The entire show was more a mookabhinayam (mime) but dealing with the essence of Ramayana.

Vanshika Sudarshan

The first line of the Sanskrit sloka narrated the episode of hunt for golden deer that led to Ravana abducting Sita in the absence of both Rama and Lakshmana. All this was presented with mime but musically supported in song format. This stops at the kingdom of Sugreeva; Lankapuri Dahanam followed by the elimination Kumbhakarna and Ravana. All this part was brilliantly portrayed by Satya Prasuna to the background sloka by vocalist Prema Ramamurthy.

Cosmic dance

Varsha Sudarshan

The second part of presentation was ‘Krishna Thandavam’ — Krishna’s dance on the hood of the serpent Kaliya. This performance by Varsha Sudarshan brought in the plate and pot elements, symbolic of how the Lord created the liquid element Ocean (plate) first and then the solid Cosmos (pot).

Later Tejaswini performed a Tamil Padam, tuned in raga Huseni. The event ended with Lalgudi G. Jayraman’s tillana in ragam Revathi.