Poems About Strength

Come, see them dance a story

The annual festival of Narada Gana Sabha generates a buzz among art lovers for its diverse topics on composers, modern poems and so on. The spotlight of the 15th festival this year, from August 12 to 17 at the Narada Gana Sabha, will be on short stories of distinguished authors such as Pudumai Pithan and Thi. Janakiraman, to be presented by Bharatanatyam artists..

The stories were chosen after a lot of painstaking research and consultations by the Natyarangam committee made up of S. Kannan, Charukesi Viswanathan, K.S. Subramaniam, Sruti Janaki, Kalpagam and Balasubramaniam, Sujatha Vijayaraghavan and Art patron R. Krishnaswamy, secretary, Narada Gana Sabha.

The festival features 12 performances by gifted dancers who have to present the stories while eschewing the use of any sahitya per se: with the added rider that the medium of dance be classical Bharatanatyam.

So how have they tackled the challenge?

Shridhar and Anuradha , senior dancers from Bengaluru who begin the festival with a short piece from ‘Sangu Thevanin Dharmam' by Pudumai Pithan, reply, “While the traditional mode of performance takes off from the lyrics, in this case, the burden is on the main protagonist the thief, the old lady and other characters. The next section is ‘Thirumangai Alwar,' which is a wholly devotional tale, where we will elaborate the metaphors in his life.”

The talented couple Parvathi and Sheejith Nambiar will perform ‘Theermanam' by Thi. Janakiraman, followed by an episode detailing Sita following Rama into the forest.

Their starting point in composing the dancing was the beautiful music set by Rajkumar Bharati, with different ragas highlighting myriad emotions. If jatis come into force in the first segment, emotion is stressed in the Ramayana story. We have included select dialogue to underscore the story.”

Bragha Bessel, known for her strength in abhinaya, emphasised how the vision of ‘Dharaigal' and the case of Ahalya grew in her mind with constant contemplation. Discussions with resource persons Sudha Seshayyan, Praveen and Jaya Srinivasan, furthered her conceptualisation, a point reiterated by all the artists.

“I wanted to present a multi-dimensional view of Ahalya and the progression of time of the short story, so this is a most exciting exercise for me,” she says, adding that she chose the lines from Kamba Ramayana for “their immediacy of reach to the audience.

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