Friday 18 May 2018

Original way of looking at group Bharatanatyam - Taalam: column by Leela Venkataraman


It was an original way of looking at Bharatanatyam, with Bengaluru's Vyuti Dance Company at the Shri Ram Centre presenting the Delhi premiere of Sakhi, a group production which sought to be, and was, different from the usual Bharatanatyam recital. As a disciple of Leela Samson, Vyuti's founder Aranyani Bhargav's Bharatanatyam commitment has been unquestionable. While strongly affirming her loyalty to the dance form and its margam repertoire, she would seem to find its format, given its stylised entirety, too minutely structured for individual experimentation. Considering the almost insurmountably daunting challenges of trying to be original and standing out, within the solo presentational canvas, Aranyani and a group of Bharatanatyam dancers have got together to explore fresh ideas for presenting group expressions. In the process, they have harnessed two devices which strictly speaking, are outside the time honoured Bharatanatyam technique –one is the physical touch and contact, with two or even three dancers with arms linked performing as one unit. The single dancer's body even in interaction with more dancers on stage avoids physical contact in Bharatanatyam. Yet another device resorted to of lifts and elevations in the air saw a dancer being lofted off the floor. Negotiating between the group and solo, multiple and the singular, Sakhi contradictorily it would seem, aims at being different while not deviating from the prescribed Bharatanatyam technique. 

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