If a dancer choreographs and transforms Masti Venkatesh Iyengar's “Gowdara Malli” into a dance ballet based on Bharatanatya techniques, one would definitely see the attempt as path breaking. And that's where Lalitha Srinivasan's strength has been — to meld Bharatanatya with a rich body of Kannada literature, as well as something as diverse as the Suladi Prabandha form of music propagated by the Haridasas.
For someone who thought that her marriage at the age of 19 would mean an end to her love for dancing, Lalitha went on to start the first-ever classical dance festival in Karnataka — Nitya Nritya in 1984. She sums up her approach to her dance when she says: “I don't think we should hang on to a repertoire that's been handed down generations. But Bharatanatya has such a rich technique, that it can adapt to anything. Creativity should run parallel; we don't need a modern vocabulary, but modern themes.” Indian dancing is everything India stands for — religion, mythology, beauty, art, culture…, she trails off and smiles.
At 67, it's her obsession with dance and her passion for it that keeps her going; a day before this interview, she's performed on stage and the altaa markings are fresh on her hands and feet. “I now do mostly abhinaya pieces. I have arthritic knees and can't do a full-fledged performance,” says the choreographer-dancer-research scholar. The dance school she set up in 1978, Nupura, has seen over 500 students learn and wing out into the world. In fact, for 10 years before that, she taught dance to school children at Malleswaram's MLA — an experience that laid the foundation for her Bharatanatya teaching career
Coming from a family where music and drama were very much a part of their liberal upbringing, Lalitha fondly recalls her formative years spent in Hassan. “At the annual cattle fair, there would be huge exhibitions where dancers like Maya Rao, Lalitha-Padmini-Ragini would dance. Theatre personality K. Hirannaiah would perform too and before his performance, he would give me a chance to go up on stage and dance whatever I wanted. I used to do acrobatic snake dances, bending backward… it must have been nonsensical!” she laughs.
From when she was 10, she started learning from Guru Keshava Murthy. “When I first went to him, I told him I had already given stage performances. I was so innocent, I was wondering what more can I learn from this man…something my Guru teased me about forever!” By 19 she was married. “At that age I wasn't bold enough to think of dance as a career. Moreover, I came from a traditional family where the daughter-in-law takes care of the family. My in-laws were much older and I didn't have the courage to ask them if I can continue dancing…” But soon she discovered there was enough help around the house and was allowed to start attending class. Her Guru persuaded her, in 1970, to take up her Vidwat exams. There were no textbooks; he handed down some books for reading and she made copious notes. She ended up with a first rank! “It made me think there was so much more to dance than going up on stage and performing.” She was also impressed by her Guru's daughter who was training at Kalakshetra.
“Abhinaya was my strength and I wanted to learn the Mysore style of Bharatanatya. I learnt from Muguru Jejamma and K. Venkatalakshamma… I used to travel to Mysore on weekends to learn.” Venkatalakshamma allowed her the freedom to learn only abhinaya and create a space for herself within that.
Her husband would ferry her to Delhi for concerts and Madras for the music season. She realised there were numerous events and festivals to showcase young and creative talent in music, but none for dance. And so was born Nitya Nritya, the annual classical dance festival she conducted for 15 consecutive years to coincide with World Dance Day, and which saw some of the best of the dancing world come down to Bangalore to perform. After a break of seven years, in 2008, the festival was back, though now in a compact three-day format. The challenges of her day may seem odd to us today, but it was frustrating when she started on her own, and when her choreography began to take shape; recorded music was hard to come by. “In the 1960s my brother finally bought me a tape recorder from the U.S. I used to sing into it, choreograph the jathis, tell the nattuvanga to learn from it…by the time a piece was completed, I would be in tears.”
It was her Guru Keshava Murthy who introduced her to Karnataka's Suladi Prabandha tradition and it took her a good 10 years to research it thoroughly before she taught it to her students. “I am a die-hard Kannadiga. My mind was set on it… wasn't there any dance tradition in Karnataka that we can follow? Why do we always hang on to the Tanjore tradition?” Then came a series of ballets — “Kavya Nritya” based on contemporary Kannada literature — Kuvempu's “Chitrangada”, works of V.K. Gokak, poet N.S. Lakshminarayana Bhatta. “I fought with my guru, saying it will look like a school programme, that people will blame me for not being a thorough traditionalist. But he always stressed: ‘The audience must enjoy it; that's the point of a performance'.”
