The softness and grace of Mohiniyattom is often equated to ‘the sway of the palm leaves in the gentle breeze.’ Dancer Prof. Kalamandalam Leelamma, former Head of the Department (Dances), currently Visiting Professor, Kerala Kalamandalam, pushed the limits of the dance style to present the Prahlada-Narasimha story from Bhagavata Purana that deals with an aggressive male and is populated with alien emotions like anger and aggression.
Narasimha Avatara was the only experimental piece in the Mohiniyattom repertoire presented for Kalakshetra’s ‘Suvritti - Traversing Creative Energies,’ a festival of choreographic works. The episode was couched within the devotional Annamacharya kriti, ‘Sriman Narayana’ (Bowli, Adi), in the second charanam, ‘Parama yogijana bhaaga dheya…’ in which the poet speaks of Narayana manifesting Himself even in the tiniest atom.
Keeping in tune with the gentle style, Leelamma’s Hiranyakasipu was aggressive in a subtle way. Seeing Prahlada praying to Narayana, he asks the son to recite his name instead. When the boy does not heed him, Hiranyakasipu gets angry and challenges the godhead. A fierce form (Narasimha) emerges from the broken pillar, catches a fleeing Hiranyakasipu, rips open his abdomen killing the demon-king. Perhaps there was a slight squaring of the shoulders to depict the aggression, but no other change in physical movements; it was the mature mukha abhinaya, facial expressions, that said it all.
The aggressive percussion (Kalamandalam C. Sivadas - mridangam, Kalamandalam Revathy - nattuvangam, Krishnakumar- edakka) set the scene for the drama. The tisra gati- sequence built up the tempo for the gory killing.
Narasimha is supposed to have taken time to cool down after this gory encounter. Setting His eyes on Prahlada, the child-devotee, He softens and blesses him. Leelamma’s handling was endearingly mellow as she transformed from a roudra Narasimha into a shanta Narasimha.
Quite apart from the experiment, it was interesting to see the seasoned artist introduce the subject of Narayana in the opening lines of the kriti. She entered the stage depicting the flow of water, later to be identified as the milky ocean, followed by the movements of a snake, Adisesha, to finally arrive at the imagery of Padmanabha reclining on the snake-bed in the milky ocean.
Kalamandalam Leelamma’s students Kalamandalam Rachitha Ravi, Kalamandalam Veena Warrier, and Kalamandalam Aiswarya presented Ganapathy stuthi, a varnam (‘Krishna shrenunee mamahridayaragam,, Simhendramadhyamam, Adi, Kilimanoor Madhu) and a Tamil thillana (Basant Bahar, Adi, Maharajapuram Santhanam). They were elegant, without angularities or jerkiness in movements; Rachita’s abhinaya in the varnam as Meera pleading for Krishna’s attention was mature, as were her depiction of the Ahalya and Sabari episodes.
Kalamandalam Karthikeyan (vocal) was correct in his delivery but can improve on the melody aspect while Padmakumar (violin) was uniformly enjoyable.
