Her first encounter with the stage was when she was four. She was not so much bothered about getting the choreography right at that time, as much as she was about playing around on the stage. But, her gurus taught her well. Twenty-five years of dancing later, today, Bhavana Reddy is the proud recipient of the Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar 2017 for Kuchipudi, awarded by Sangeet Natak Akademi. She is delighted but not satisfied. More than the milestone, Bhavana is now thinking about the number of tremendous roads she can possibly travel on, taking her dance to newer pastures. “It feels great,” says Bhavana, “mainly because it opens up so many windows for an artiste. These days, there are a lot of dancers who go through recommendations and get performances but this award is a standardisation. The criterion for many festivals is to be a national award winner. For me the ultimate agenda is to be able to perform for good audiences. Everybody likes a large audience, but to be able to perform for the connoisseurs of the art is a different thing,” she says.
Like all awards, the Yuva Puraskar also comes with its own set of controversies. The upper age limit for the Puraskar being 40 years, often, there have been debates about whether 40 can be considered young at all. That apart, recently, two famous musicians refused the award, because they thought there are others who are more deserving. There are also artistes who have called out the nepotism in the Akademi, and how the eligibility requires recommendations from the board. “We’re not the ones who make the rules. But, I do feel that 40 is too old for a Yuva Puraskar. The lifespan of a dancer is not long. For dancers, our instrument is our body. After a point, my body will stop responding the way it used to, so in that sense, 40 is perhaps old. By then, you are a seasoned choreographer, teacher and performer. You feel and express things differently as you grow older. I recently read an article about artistes who do not have any family backing or support for them and how it is difficult for them to get awards. I think my response would be that the grass always looks greener on the other side. Everybody works hard for what they are doing. There are different pressures when your growth has to happen in the spotlight. You may get the awards but if you don’t deserve it, everybody will ridicule you. Everything has its pros and cons,” says Bhavana.
Bhavana’s training began at a tender age, under parents – Raja, Radha and Kaushalya Reddy’s able tutelage. She started touring the world even before making the conscious decision to become a dancer. “Whatever said and done, there is always some sort of spiritual element to music and dance, something that you experience very naturally when you are born into an artistic family. It keeps you grounded, disciplined and focused; you could go into a different tangent. In the beginning, I would feel the same way about doing shows and giving examinations. It was the same kind of nervousness and emotions I underwent, but eventually, as I grew up, that changed,” she says. Her interest in Western music also opened new, unusual avenues, moulding her creative faculties. “For me, if I have to choose both music and dance as professions, I would definitely be compromising a great deal on quality. In the last few years, I made a conscious decision in my mind that dance is my main profession and it is something that I love doing. I like music but it is something I will pursue as a hobby on the side, for myself,” she adds.
Of rhythm and poetry
Bhavana says that as a dancer, it is crucial to know the music one is dancing to. How one approaches the choreography changes when one understands the rhythm and poetry.
“Sitting down with the song gives you the leeway to improvise it. It helps you emote in the most wonderful ways, while keeping in mind the rhythm. You cannot understand tisram to sankeernam only in theory. Unless you implement it in your dance over and over again, you will not develop creativity. Learning the music and the language in which you are dancing is the most important thing for a dancer. For my choreographies, I don’t believe in changing the grammar of Kuchipudi that I have learnt because that essentially means diluting the style and losing the identity. Kuchipudi is rather flexible, it has elements both of the lokadharmi and natyadharmi. In lokadharmi, there is an open window, because you get to modify the aspects of the character that you are playing. For instance, in my father’s production “Rasanubhuti”, I did two emotions, hasya and bhaya. He only gave me a structure of what he wants. He set the beats, and left it up to me. So, I tried to pick up elements from Charlie Chaplin to portray hasya. I was given a basic structure and I could experiment with it. In sanchari bhava, there is much scope for improvisation, and no grammar rulebook,” says Bhavana.
This week, Bhavana is all set to perform at the American Telengana Conference in Houston, Texas and Washington DC Millenium Stage, Kennedy Centre and at the Drive East Festival in New York and San Francisco.
