Moments of movement and melody from Music Academy's mega dance festival - Taalam: column by Leela Venkataraman

It was Madras Music Academy's 18th dance festival - a mega event featuring thirty two dancers over a week! One took in as much as a strained back, thanks to hours of couch potato sitting, would accommodate. 

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Solo projections of high quality and promise in Dance for Dance festival - Taalam: column by Leela Venkataraman

Curated by dancer Malavika Sarukkai, the fifth consecutive Dance for Dance festival (Dec 20-22, 2024) held at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan with the co-sponsorship of Kartik Fine Arts, would seem to have carried further, Kalavahini’s principle aim of a platform where the best among established dancers, perform in tandem with the specially selected promising young talent. Really deserving dance aspirants struggling against slender resources, will surely benefit from Kalavahini’s programme comprising intensity of the Dance Immersion Classes with seed money provided for a new venture – to which is, now, an added heartening introduction of a scholarship. It is a welcome sign when senior dancers who have made the grade, exercising concern for the future of the art form and for preserving an unassailable adherence to quality, step forward to enlist support for genuinely deserving younger talent. 

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Interview - Divya Warier on cross-discipline mentorship - Shveta Arora

During the COVID-19 outbreak and lockdowns in 2020, dancer Divya Warier organized Pratiroop, an online cross-mentorship programme that put dancers and mentors from different dance forms together. The result was short solos that were extremely concept-rich and innovative, with the dancers pushing the boundaries of their creativity and form under a guru who brought the influences and perspective of another discipline to bear on the usual production process.

Pratiroop started as an online, video production platform for lack of choice, when lockdowns made it impossible to meet in person or perform on stage. However, the dancers used the opportunity to create well-produced videos and adapt to the medium. Some of dancers also exploited the video medium effectively, creating solos that were not one unbroken stage performance, but used angles, cuts and editing to create dance movies. Pratiroop has had four iterations so far, two during COVID in 2020 and 2021, and two after. Divya also organizes a cross-mentorship residency in Kerala.

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Prism - NAVARASA SADHANA: An alternate actor training module based on Indian Traditional Theatre and Natyasastra - G Venu

 

...However, notwithstanding the Indian theatre possessing such a rich tradition, all the present theatre training methodologies practised in India follow the Western theatre practices. The Method Acting, evolved by Stanislavski who had lived during the first half of 20th century is still the most popular acting methodology in India. The techniques based on Natyasastra are limited to the training of the classical dance forms. This has given rise to a popular misconception that the Natyasastra is a system that pertains only to the dance forms. Such a misapprehension in turn arises from the misreading of Natyasastra that it just encompasses a stylised rendering of the four-fold acting methodology comprising of Angika, Vachika, Aharya and Sathwika abhinaya-s. The Indian theatre schools diligently follow all the Western masters of theatre right from Stanislavski to Antonin Artaud and Jerzy Grotowski etc. It was during my own training of Kutiyattam under Guru Ammannur Madhava Chakyar that I started learning to tell apart the major differentiations between Kathakali and Kutiyattam. I had entered Kutiyattam after learning Kathakali for eight years. As I started distinguishing between the dance theatre of Kathakali and the theatrical form of Kutiyattam, I started to contemplate seriously on the notion of what makes up the Indian theatre.

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Twenty fourth year of Natya Darshan Festival - Taalam: column by Leela Venkataraman

Unlike earlier Natya Darshan festivals, this year's celebration, convened by dancer Narthaki Nataraj was built round a theme of the body as a temple, with the motto Connect, Communicate, Elevate, while dealing with a subject. Involving the Pancha Kosha or five layers or sheaths of the human body from Annamaya Kosha, the outermost layer sustained by food, to Pranamaya Kosha, the physical body with life breath, to Manomaya Kosha the vital mental body, to the deeper recesses of mind in Vighyanamaya Kosha, till finally to the total silence and complete harmony of bliss in Anandamaya Kosha, underlines an evolution from gross to subtle body - signifying the route that art also takes with the practitioner - from the physical dancer to the one who communicates from his innermost being. Instead of the comfort of presenting items selected from the common Margam repertoire, here was a need to go through literature in the vernacular languages, to find material suitable to the prescribed theme, and all the participants one saw, had spared no efforts to live up to their allotted theme. 

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Obit/Tribute - Kathak Guru Chitra Venugopal (1936 - 2025)

Her middle name ought to have been SMILE. That was her best abhushan (jewelry) too. She was a picture – Chitra - of poise and graciousness. Actually, all the three sisters were: Maya Rao, the lighthouse of Kathak in Bangalore; Uma Subbarao, affable and amiable artist and art lover; and Chitra Venugopal, illustrious teacher of Kathak to hundreds.

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Chennai swamped by Margazhi music/dance deluge - Taalam: column by Leela Venkataraman

Come Margazhi Season and with the deluge of music /dance and lectures on art in Chennai, one jumps grasshopper like from one Sabha to another, trying to absorb as much as one's energy and trafficking through bumpy and in places water-logged roads and alleys, will allow. In the desire not to miss out on opportunities, one often misses out on the luxury of sitting through entire events, ending up seeing parts of festivals playing out at various centres.

LECTURE BY BRITISH HISTORIAN WILLIAM DALRYMPLE

NRITHYA CHOODAMANI AND SANGEETHA CHOODAMANI

NAVIA'S VIRODHABHASA INTENSITY STRUGGLES AGAINST AUDIENCE RIGIDITY

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