The dance annual Attendance edited and published by Bangalore based
Ashish Khokar, has earned quite a reputation with its themes and
aesthetic sense. Its special issue on Classical Dance and Modern Times,
guest-edited by Dr. SD Desai, recently launched in Delhi, deserves
notice for two reasons – celebrated dancers of the country belonging to
our internationally known dance forms share their thoughts on how they
attempt to reach out to as many people as possible and in the process
without compromising on the traditional aspects of the forms they
represent.
Read the review in the site
The 23rd edition of the Raindrops Festival of classical dance on July 20
organized by the celebrated Kathak exponent Uma Dogra under the aegis
of Sam Ved Society for Performing Arts in association with SAB Miller
India held at Mini Ravindra Natya Mandir aka P.L Deshpande Theatre, next
to Siddhivinayak Temple, Prabhadevi, Mumbai was a runaway success in
spite of the torrential July rains. No wonder Uma has given this
festival the name Raindrops, justifying the heralding of dance and music
festivals in Mumbai with the onset of monsoon. The rains did not stop
Mumbaikars and dance lovers from making their way to the mini theatre
which was packed. It was indeed very heartening to see the excitement
and the crowds for the dance festival. Uma’s daughter Suhani, a writer
in her own right and currently on the staff of India Today, politely
requested the disciples of Uma and Sam Ved Society to give seats to the
senior citizens and invitees.
Read the review in the site
In addition to the standard list of status symbols that those obsessed
with their social status today buy with money, such as newspaper
reviews, TV appearances, dance awards and titles, and real estate on the
Moon, there is a brand new item: Facebook likes. It seems, it is not
just the US State Department who buy ‘Likes’ on Facebook
, but some Bharatanatyam schools have gone on the likes buying spree as
well. Just a couple of months ago, the page of a very young
Bharatanatyam school had steadily grown over the years to list
over 2000 likes, while the number of people who "liked" the page of the
large Bharatanatyam school where she studied since the school was 10% of
its present strength was nearly 8 times less and hardly growing.
Apparently, the school's PR managers were unwilling to realise that not
everybody out of the 300+ students in their school is a born dancer.
Extraordinary talent and skill cannot be mass produced at dance
factories.
Read the article in the site
Most of our dance repertoire is poetry in song. We seldom get to read
them just for their poetic beauty .We read them only when we are
researching new texts for dance. Language skills are needed for this
exercise. Poems when set to suitable tunes should inspire lyrical dance.
When I first encountered some lovely poems from ancient Tamil translated
into poetic English I was excited enough to make Girish Karnad read
some as I danced to the melodies of a sitar under a starlit sky in the
Cholamandal artists village near Chennai. This was way back in 1976 and
the book of translations was the famous Interior Landscape by A.K.
Ramanujan. The last time I met him was in Hyderabad airport. A genial
and unassuming man he told me, “I am coming out with something of
particular interest to you. That book is When God is Customer.” I found
his translations of many of my padams delightful and used them often to
introduce my dance. Instead of the usual introductions, I just read out
the poems and needless to say it was more than effective. Bhagirati, a
theatre person and friend read some of them when I premiered an entire
evening of padams titled HRDAYA VILAPAM. I think we enjoyed the evening
as much as the audience.
Read the article in the site
