Wholesome treat

The Vysakhi national dance festival was rich in experience and served as a valuable learning experience for emerging artistes, writes Ranee Kumar.

September 18, 2014 07:24 pm | Updated 07:24 pm IST - Hyderabad

MATCHING STEPS Scenes from the Kathak and Kuchipudi performances at the fest.

MATCHING STEPS Scenes from the Kathak and Kuchipudi performances at the fest.

The recent four-day annual Vysakhi Nrityotsav was a wholesome fare where artistes performed, propagated and preached dance through educative, interactive sessions, discussions, workshops and performances of a different genre, not to mention felicitations with life-time achievement and excellence awards to dedicated artistes. It was a festival that carried an import, rich in experience. The message was loud and clear: classical art form like dance had to be sustained and carried forward into the future by training the younger set of aspirants in the right mode and direction. The need of the hour — especially in our own regional art form, viz. Kuchipudi — as the organizers as well as senior artistes and acharyas felt, was to bury individual differences and standardize the dance under a single banner, lay the ground rules and restore some of its lost glory especially in the category of classicality. This is especially relevant in the present circumstances where each individual is emerging with a style of his/her own thereby challenging the very classification of ‘classical dance form’.

Stalwarts and acharyas in the field like Radha and Raja Reddy, Manju Bhargavi, Anupama Mohan converged on a single platform to hoist the ‘Kuchipudi’ insignia and pledge to work towards a common goal.

The Nrityotsav had a slightly hectic schedule, where education met entertainment, where mornings were devoted to diligent dance workshops and seminars and evenings to viewing and performing. But for dance enthusiasts it was celebration time. You got to meet and vibe with maestros whom you would otherwise never meet. Moving in close quarters and in the process enhancing your own learning with the likes of Dhananjeyans, Raja Reddys, Kalamandalam Kshemavathy or Ranjana Gauhar was not commonplace; such rare occasions are to be treasured and savoured. Seeing them perform was to open the texts of classics where perfection met perseverance, while up and coming artistes were also given a platform to showcase their talent.

Young artistes like Roopa Kiran, Nemani Sai Gargi, Sujana, Bathina Sisters (Tejasri and Bhagyasri) and Lalith Kumar Gupta chose to present one or two pieces from the vast repertoire of Kuchipudi/Bharatanatyam. Experts were juxtaposed with the aspiring and amateur giving us a mirror image of the perfect past and the nebulous present as far as classical dance went; and in the centre were today’s artistes of repute like Manju Bhargavi, Deepika Reddy, Vani Madhav and the highly talented pupils of Kathak exponent Mysore B. Nagaraj, the Dhananjeyans and the Reddys, who carried the mantle of their illustrious gurus in body and spirit.

Last but not the least was daily symposium for art and culture journalists addressed by seniors in the field like VAK Ranga Rao.

Kudos to the efforts of Vikram Goud, a passionate connoisseur of art for taking pains to organise a festival on such a huge scale for seven years consecutively under the aegis of his dance school, Natraj Music and Dance Academy, an ISO certified institution with tireless enthusiasm, all in the name of promoting classical arts!

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