The series-- Adhyaya, organised by Mayuri Upadhya’s Nritarutya recently featured Odissi dancer Arushi Mudgal and contemporary dancer Vishwakiran Nambi. Taking off from the name of the event, if one were to say that both Arushi and Vishwakiran could each have a chapter dedicated to their practise in a book on dance and dancers of today, it would not be an exaggeration.
A student of Madhavi Mudgal, Arushi presented four pieces that were choreographed by her. “Music is my driving force,” said Arushi when asked to speak about her process of choreography and one saw glimpses of this both in ‘Srjan’, a piece about creation and in the padam- ‘Teruvil Varano’. In fact, dance and music functioned as a cohesive unit in Arushi’s performance, making it difficult to say whether the hand moved to the turn of phrase in the song or the other way around.
She also chose the music and texts for her dance pieces thoughtfully-- verses from the Sri Sukta for the invocation which was a piece titled ‘Kamala’ and excerpts from the Mundaka Upanishad to portray aspects of creativity and creation. But the piece which best exemplified the unity in music and dance was the padam. Arushi danced to a recorded version of ‘Teruvil Varano’ sung by Sikkil Gurucharan accompanied by Anil Srinivasan on the piano. The piece speaks about a nayika’s moment of anticipation as she wonders whether she will see Shiva as he crosses her street, whether he would look at her right then and what that moment would be like. The piano captures the mood of contemplation rather well and Arushi’s abhinaya played it up to the right measure.
Her expressions were poised in the tricky space between hope and impatience and stretched that one moment of anticipation beautifully by taking us into each of her thoughts-- ‘should I dress up?’ ‘Does he know I’m waiting for him?’ ‘What if he never turns up?’ and so on.
Clad in a purple and orange costume, Arushi had remarkable stage presence. Her movements were refined and graceful and expressed a clarity of thought that was evident anyway through the choreography, the conceptualisation as well as the music. Arushi also created moments that stayed with you long after the performance. There was a particular portion from ‘Srjan’ that stood out, for instance, when Arushi portrayed the creator of the universe as an artist -- as a spectacle, this scene was mesmerising to watch. Thenthe final scene of the padam too was stunning, when as the disheartened nayika, Arushi goes back to the door just once to see if Shiva has arrived.
When he came on stage next, Vishwakiran Nambi changed the ambience to something drastically dramatic within no time. His idiom was contemporary but the influences that inform this idiom--Bharatanatyam, ballet, modern dance, Kalaripayattu-- were varied. There was an element of shock and awe that was present in Vishwakiran’s performance which ensured that your attention was on him throughout.
He began with an energetic piece titled ‘Trishanku’. The opening itself, with an aerial dance sequence was stunning. Vishwakiran hung upside down, his legs balanced between two pieces of cloth hanging from the ceiling and slowly made his way to the stage. Repetitive movements formed the crux of the piece and spoke directly to the theme of reflection and restlessness of modern lives that runs throughout the composition; the three sins of Trishanku were also touched upon.
Vishwakiran danced around the imagined corners of a spotlight, not once slipping out of sight, creating a sense of oppressiveness-- spatially exploring the theme of the piece again.
The sound and music choreographed by Raghu Dixit was riveting to say the least. But the piece that stole the show was Vishwakiran’s next: a composition where dance intersected with technology. A creative sequence with a remote controlled car opens the piece--where it is sometimes the car that chases the dancer and sometimes the dancer that chases the car-- a reading of our modern day relationship with technology one could say. Light played an important role in this performance often playing the jugalbandi with the dancer. Vishwakiran’s energy during this performance was commendable.
While this edition of Adhyaya highlighted the prowess of the two dancers, it also gave the audience an inkling of the kind of experiments or broadly, the kind of conversations that are taking place in dance forms like Odissi and contemporary dance today. In that sense, these were not just chapters about the dancers alone but of the journey of dance itself in contemporary times.
