The India International Centre presented a two-day festival of Bharatanatyam by male dancers, “Purushaakaram”, as part of its Monsoon Festival last week. The four young but established dancers – Praveen Kumar from Bengaluru, Lokesh Bharadwaj from Delhi and Renjith Babu and S. Vijayakumar, both from Chennai – each brought to the stage their personal interpretation of Bharatanatyam. All were in superb technical form, yet used their medium to make an artistic statement rather than draw attention to their prowess. Euphonic sound balancing, rather than the rock show volumes inexplicably found at most performances these days, added to the aesthetic delight of the festival.
Here are some highlights:
Praveen Kumar, who opened the festival, has for a number of years been working on pieces centred on a male protagonist, in an effort to break out of the mould of the nayika bhava in which the dancer is associated with a female voice.
Exemplifying this approach were his padam, “Ososi naa madilo” in raga Mukhari, and a devarnaama, a Purandaradasa composition addressed to the non-conformist child Krishna.
The padam was the plaint of a married man whose overtures towards another woman are spurned. Praveen presented a quietly hilarious portrait of the man preening in front of his mirror, shooing away his children so they won’t crumple his clothes and rudely rejecting his wife’s request to come out with him, telling her to look after the little ones instead. Jilted by the woman with whom he is besotted, he complains that he had to put up with the ignominy of ignoring his family in the hope that she would one day accept him. “I didn’t know you were so stone-hearted,” he says, and announces his determination to go to Kashi to wash away his sins! Praveen brought out the drama inherent in the situation with subtlety.
In the devarnama composition (raga Abhogi), the poet asks the child Krishna to play inside the house, as when he goes out he gets up to mischief and the neighbours complain about his butter stealing and other notorious deeds. Does the lord of the 14 worlds need this reputation?, he asks. Normally, said the dancer, this composition would be interpreted with vatsalya or motherly love, but he depicted a father’s love. Tempting the child with butter, new ornaments and games, Praveen created a cameo reminiscent of many a contemporary father trying to keep a smart child out of trouble.
He had chosen to begin with a neat and dignified shabdam on Kartikeya, a significant choice in itself, as the shabdam with its simple beauty seems to have been sidelined in an era of excess. He also presented Harikesanallur Muthaiah Bhagavathar’s daru varnam, “Maate malayadhwaja Pandya sanjaate” in raga Khamas with measured and clear abhinaya.
K. Venkateswaran’s honest open voice was a pleasure to hear as he immersed himself in singing. Hindustani flautist Rajat Prasanna has made an art of coaxing more than just Carnatic touches out of his bamboo flute and provided soft and devotional accompaniment. M. Chandrasekhar on the mridangam followed faithfully, adding fillers at just the right time to highlight the pauses, while young dancer Subbulakshmi Ganesh provided adequate nattuvangam.
Renjith Babu’s repertoire for the evening was based on the concept of a devotee yearning to see the cosmic dance of Shiva. He began with a Sanskrit verse, the invocatory shloka from Kalidasa’s “Abhijnana Shakuntalam”. Set to raga Simhendramadhyamam and Adi tala by Renjith’s guru, C.V. Chandrasekhar, it had a meditative quality evoked by instrumental taanam. That said, Renjith had his work cut out to focus audience attention, as he was performing to recorded music while the mike stands and white sheet placed for Praveen’s orchestra earlier remained staring emptily from the side of the stage.
This he did by the sheer quality of his youthful nritta. Choosing a purly devotional margam he did face a challenge different from that posed by the conventional Bharatanatyam margam. While the latter offers various dramatic situations the dancer needs to explore through a range of bhavas, Renjith had to remain within the confines of ‘synonyms’ like bhakti, pleading and abject obeisance, with the occasional peppering of adbhuta or wondering ecstasy. Creditably for this young artist, he brought out these emotions with veracity.
His varnam was Papanasam Sivan’s “Swami Naan Undan Adimei” in raga Nattakurunji, Adi tala. The marathon dance composition – not for the faint-hearted – was once more Guru Chandrasekhar’s. Renjith sustained the demanding adavu combinations with effortless accuracy and poise.
His “Varugalamo Ayya” (raga Manji, Mishra Chapu tala) by Gopalakrishna Bharati was choreographed by Indira Kadambi, under whom Renjith has also been trained. Renjith remained immersed in the devotional sthayi. However, it comes to mind whether dancers/choreographers, in today’s social and political milieu, would want to rethink how to compose passages like when the poet says he is a low-born person who has done no good deeds to deserve spiritual credit.
In this case, the dancer mimed sweeping and cleaning the (presumably) road and bringing a cow (or goat) to slaughter. How much one sticks to the beaten path – that hails from a less inclusive era – or expands to embrace the sentiments of a contemporary viewership is, of course, a personal decision.
Renjith concluded with the ecstatic “Idathu padam”, the Papanasam Sivan song in Khamas and Adi, which describes Shiva’s tandava dance. The dance composition was by C.V. Chandrasekhar, who gave the dancer plenty of scope to show various ways in which Shiva, balancing on his steady right leg, lifts his left leg into the air and dances.
The second day began with S. Vijaykumar, a disciple of Sujatha Parameswaram, who too danced to recorded music. The highly talented Vijayakumar is also a vocalist and mridangist. His soundtrack featuring his own singing and nattuvangam, though mridangam and flute, were done by other artists.
The youthful Vijayakumar’s Bharatanatyam has a cheerful quality. He chose a nayika-centric varnam, “Eno innum varaadadeno sakhi”, depicting the nayika telling her sakhi of her longing for Kartikeya. He elaborated how Kartikeya stormed off in anger when his younger brother Ganesh outsmarted him, by circumambulating their parents Shiva and Parvati as representative of the universe, instead of literally racing round the world as Kartikeya did, to get the fruit offered as a trophy by them. Thus Kartikeya took the form of Dandayudhapani in the Palani hills.
In the varnam and later his abhinaya where the poet (Uttukadu Venkatasubbaiah) beseeches Krishna not to dance, as he upsets the whole universe with everyone joining in, Vijayakumar showed his capacity for spontaneous abhinaya. He weaves the little risks of a stage performance, like, say, an ornament falling off, into the story. In that instance, he showed the nayika telling her sakhi, “see how my bangle falls off,” alluding to the classical image of viraha that leads to emaciation.
Vijayakumar tends to add bhava to his nritta. This is an accepted style, and quite natural when one dances with the spirit and not merely the mechanics of the body, but it can sometimes seem a shade overdone.
Lokesh Bharadwaj, trained by Justin McCarthy, took the stage in the finale of the fest. And true to the bent of both guru and disciple it was a performance unlike any other Bharatanatyam recital. Here the focus was meditation rather than storytelling, an adherence to the inner calling rather than any constraints posed by perceived audience tastes and a non-arrogant indifference towards make-up and ornamentation.
There was also a playful irreverence for movement conventions of the form. To take just one example, his bhramaris (pirouettes) go in the opposite direction to the way the adavu is usually taught. This has become natural to Lokesh and a personal signature of his guru.
Lokesh opened with “Kailasanathena samrakshitoyam” of Muttuswami Dikshitar, a composer difficult to transpose to dance due to his spiritual profundity and abstract imagery. Here the song talks of Shiva as the supreme yogi.
In the next composition, Tyagaraja’s “Endaro mahanubhavulu” in raga Shri, the poet pays homage to all the realised souls perfect in their devotion. Lokesh’s adbhuta or wondrous delight at the greatness of these beings formed the sthayi of the piece.
“Paramatmudu” in raga Vaagadhishwari was moving in its serenity. Here Tyagaraja talks of the one supreme soul that pervades all that exists in the universe – nature, living beings, the five elements.
Flow of movement, and an unbroken transition from one element to another sustained this piece, which was essentially a dialogue with the self.
Vocalist Sudha Raghuraman was in superb control, contained in her musical expression and one with the mood of the dancer. G. Raghuraman on the flute contributed with a fine sensibility. Nattuvangam by Guru Justin McCarthy took command of the jatis, with risk taking pauses and syllables seemingly borrowed from the older system of talas, keeping mridangist M.V. Chandersekhar interested.
It seemed music and dance were essentially one in this recital, with no one taking personal flights.
