One can see that Jyolsana Menon, a Kalakshetra graduate and a senior faculty member of the institution, is an academician. Her Bharatanatyam style has a ‘textbook' perfect technique, with excellent footwork, proper arm movements, exact greeva bhedas and drishti bhedas (neck movements and eye glances) and appropriate expressions. She is standing example of a teacher following what she preaches.
If she is such a perfectionist as a teacher, what about Jyolsana, the performer? Though both come from the same background, a performer needs to extend herself or himself beyond the technical niceties to communicate with the viewer. In this, Jyolsana fell short. Performing others' choreographies and making it your own also requires additional effort.
One has to first get it right, but beyond that is an involvement from the heart. In music it is manodharma in the form of raga alapanas, tanams, etc but in dance too there are subtler signs. In this case, little things sucha as maintaining eye contact with the audience while finishing lines in a padam (‘Padari Varugudu,' Khambodi, Ghanam Krishna Iyer) or taking the audience with you when you triumphantly walk away hand in hand with the nayaka in the ‘Yerarara' javali (Khamas, Dharmapuri Subbarayar) would have helped to communicate clearly. Jyolsana's presentations were pre-dominantly Kalakshetra ‘originals' except for the invocatory ‘Jaya Tunga Tarange Gange' (Hamsadhwani, Adi, Sadasiva Brahmendra) that had been choreographed by Nirmala Nagarajan, senior faculty, Kalakshetra. It told us of how Ganga was created out of the water that washed Narayana's big toe in the Vamana avatara. The short episode preceded and succeeded by nritta passages, was framed well.
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The Anandabhairavi padavarnam, ‘Sakhiye Indha Velaiyil' (Adi, Chinnayya) dealt with a lovelorn heroine pleading with her sakhi (friend) not be indifferent to her suffering and to help her by bringing Rajagopala to her.
What one cannot understand is that the next presentation, the Khambodi padam, reflected the same sentiment of being love-sick, begging the friend to help... The only difference was the hero -- Rajagopala and Kandaswamy!
One has heard better from K. Hariprasad (vocal); only the Khambodi piece showcased his best. Ananthanarayanan (veena) was also excellent in this padam, though he and Tyagarajan (flute) were attentively tuneful all evening. Karthik (mridangam) and Rakesh (nattuvangam) gave Jyolsana dignified guidance. They concluded with a beautiful Natabhairavi thillana (Adi, Veena Krishnamachari) dedicated to Rukmini Devi and Kalakshetra in the presence of the famed Sharada Hoffman, who first presented it in the 1940s!
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