Sathvikaa Shankar, disciple of well-known Bharatanatyam teacher Anita Guha, is quite the all-rounder. While her timing and execution are admirable, she is particularly agile. She is able to hold one-legged poses, with balance and expression, for extended periods of time. She has a confident stage presence that reflects her concentration and maturity.
With senior musicians, Hariprasad (vocal) and Kandadevi Dr. S. Vijayaraghavan (violin) on the team, the music was sheer poetry. The delectable choice of songs - ‘Mathe,’ Khamas-daru varnam, ‘Telisenura,’ Saveri javali, ‘Ka Va Va,’ Varali kriti - enhanced the experience. Rhythm masters, Anita (nattuvangam) and Ramshankar Babu (mridangam), complete the elite group.
The artists established themselves from the beginning and as the true notes from the violin filled the small auditorium of Sri Parthasarathy Swami Sabha in the Gambhira Nattai pushpanjali (Adi, vidwan Madurai N. Krishnan) and in the Nattai Sai Baba invocation (Adi, Dr. Kalyani Sundarajan), a calming sense of beauty took over. The dancer breezed in confidently to the tisra Adi beat, and guided by Anita, handled the nritta and the prayer with ease. Sathvikaa displayed her sensitivity as she presented the roudra rupa of Narasimha in a prolonged frieze ending with a shantha rupa Yoga Narasimha, who manifested as Sai Baba.
She was deft as she dealt with the rigour of the jatis and the fast thattu-mettus in the varnam. Anita’s style is to add fast-paced ‘ thai thai dhi dhi thais ’ within thattu-mettu sequences to add extra punch. The adavus in the first half were more angular with many poses giving it a contemporary touch, while the second half retained an old- world charm. The mukthayi swara and sahitya are the stand-out features in the composition; they turned out to be poetic statements of swaras, solkattu swara sahitya and the regular Sanskrit - kannada sahitya with a swara-akshara feature, strung together in a glorious combination of rhythm, melody and silence.
The story of Goddess Meenakshi - as the Pandya Raja’s daughter (chk) who was brave and who fell in love with Siva, and as the fierce Chamundeshwari who killed the demons Chanda and Munda, were well-represented as short, descriptive passages. The devotional Varali piece was delineated in a soft-focus mode with no extra movement to disturb the beauty of the music and the sentiment of longing for Subramanya. Hariprasad was at his soulful best here with a well-warmed up voice.
The Saveri javali had a heavy musical framework and sounded beautiful, but was visually confusing as Sathvikaa switched sides alternately as the angry nayika confronting the nayaka about his pleasing behaviour towards the other woman. This was the only drawback in an otherwise flawless performance.
