“In dance I can be a poet, painter and singer. Figuratively speaking, writing my own dance poems, painting my dancing spaces and singing with my body,” says renowned Bharatanatyam exponent Alarmel Valli, who was honoured with the Natya Kala Acharya Award by the Music Academy Madras for 2016.
Her one piece of advice for aspiring dancers is practice with devotion, passion and humility. “And always be true to yourself and the dance.”
The uniqueness about Alarmel Valli is that she has been performing even before she attained the age of 10. Since 1966, she has been training in the Pandanallur style of Bharatanatyam under Chokkalingam Pillai and his son Subbaraya Pillai.
She has also been trained in Carnatic music having learnt it from A. Panchapakesa and T. Muktha.
To mark the occasion, she answered a few questions:
Do you perform Odissi which you have learnt from Kelucharan Mohapatra?
I studied Odissi for many years and I was singularly fortunate to train under Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra and his disciple Ramani Ranjan Jena. But I feel that in one lifetime, we cannot grasp even a fraction of the complexities and nuances of one dance form. As I went deeper into Bharatanatyam, I gave up performing Odissi.
Which are some of your own choreographies?
Since I was 20 years old, I have been choreographing my own compositions, following the principles learnt from Pandanallur Subbaraya, researching poetry and literature, commissioning music and working closely with leading musicians and poets.
Over the last three decades, it has been hugely fulfilling and rewarding to create a significant body of work from ancient Tamil Sangam poetry to see how powerfully these ancient poems are able to communicate, across centuries and cultures. My work also includes collaborative productions with Odissi dancer Madhavi Mudgal, concert vocalists like Bombay Jayashri Ramnath, Savita Narasimhan and Nisha Rajagopal and poets like Arundhathi Subramaniam.
Is it possible today to be a guru or a performer without any formal education?
My gurus in music and dance, or legendary artists like T.Balasaraswati or M.S.Subhalakshmi may not have any formal education. My masters transmitted much by the process of osmosis as it were, as repositories of the collective knowledge of centuries, what they could offer was capable of transforming the lives of thousands.
A career in dance or music cannot offer assured financial security like other professions. Today, the struggle to succeed in an overly crowded dance world, is even more of a challenge. Only if they have passion, determination, patience, humility, commitment and courage - and needless to say, a unique gift can one afford to take the risk of giving up on formal education.
Do you still go through the same rigorous practice before a performance that you used to in the beginning?
I practice even more today. There are more expectations from me. Every performance for me, is like a public examination – a challenge to rise to people's expectations of me and more importantly, to live up to my own expectations of myself. I do not believe in presenting any composition, unless I have practiced it to the point, when the rhythms of the dance become as natural as the rhythms of breathing. When I can stop thinking and just "be".
Who was your role model in Bharatanatyam in your younger days?
I first saw the legendary T. Balasarswati dance when I was 15. It was a truly epiphanic moment. She represented the perfect coming together of the poetry of word, melody and movement. Later, I studied music with Balasaraswati Amma’s cousin, the great singer, T. Muktha. She shaped my approach to dance as visual music where, ideally speaking, I feel you should be able to see the music and hear the dance.
At what age did you have your arangetram?
My gurus presented me in my debut performance, my arangetram, when I was not yet 10 years old. It was unusual for them, but they seemed to feel I was ready and apparently told my mother so. As far as I was concerned, my only concern was with pleasing my gurus and my mother. There was a major cyclone in Chennai that night and since there was a huge downpour after the performance began, I had a virtually captive audience!
