Stirring deeply disturbing thoughts and with the creative urge to express them Sita’s Agni Pravesam scene as narrated in Valmiki Ramayanam, certainly brought out the best in Meenakshi Srinivasan’s Bharatanatyam recital the Music Academy festival. The textual base provided by Professor Raghuraman’s Tamil translation, with music contributed by Hariprasad and rhythmic inputs by percussionist Vedakrishnaram, built up the right emotive backdrop. It inspired Meenakshi’s experiment – dignified in Sita’s statement of righteous indignation, on the unfairness of what she was being put through. That she emerged unscathed is not the point. “That Ravana desired me is not my fault”, she says to Rama. “You think of your ‘kulam’, what of my kulam as the daughter of King Janaka,” she demands on Rama’s insistence that his act of revenge on Ravana was only to save the honour of his kula and the war not waged for the sake of Sita. Without going overboard with drama, the dancer held on to restraint — a hallmark of evolved aesthetic judgment.
After opening with Mahakavi Bharati’s ragamalika/talamalika kriti ‘Matha Parasakti’ came the K.D. Dandayudapani varnam ‘Mohamaginen’ in Kharaharapriya set to Adi tala. With Hariprasad’s bhava-filled singing, Meenakshi gave a convincing portrayal of the nayika smitten with love for Lord Siva.
The jati portions showed the dancer’s flair for neat lines and rhythm. But on completion of the final ‘kitataka tarikitatom’, reaching the sama, instead of freezing , Meenakshi has a mannerism of raising the left hand in a kind of triumphant gesture, as if declaring that she has arrived flawlessly at the finishing point. It was a sore point in an otherwise flawless performance. Rajkumar Bharati’s tillana with a verse from Tirukkural concluded the performance.
