UPAJ - Part II - NRITYA (Section # 2): Column by Janaki Patrik

ELEMENTS of IMPROVISATION

1. The Kathak body stance & stage conventions

Kathak has origins in the village storytelling style katha vaachak - literally meaning "story speaker" - from the Sanskrit root vaak - speech. Kathak's lingering folk elements contribute to the informality of many of Kathak's storytelling techniques, and to the ease with which performers can improvise. Performed with an upright torso carried on straight legs and loose knees, Kathak can cover space with an un-stylized gait, which is close to ordinary human movement. With the continuity of its upright stance for both nritta and nritya (pure dance and storytelling), Kathak can seamlessly transition into the distinctive gaits of all kinds of characters in its stories, uninterrupted by the need to return periodically to a style-imposed position such as Bharatanatyam's araimandi , the "half-sitting" pose , or Odissi's tribhanga - "thrice-bent "- pose . 

Read more in the site

Please provide your name / email id along with your comment. Anonymous and derogatory comments will be removed.

UPAJ - Part II - NRITYA (Section # 1): Column by Janaki Patrik

In my two-part essay entitled "UPAJ - Improvisation in Kathak", written for Narthaki Online, I endeavor to demystify Kathak's rhythmic and storytelling improvisational processes. I suggest that improvisation is an art which is learned and practiced - an art which is not limited only to those who are "born with it". UPAJ - Part I - NRITTA examines the structures in Kathak dance, which support rhythmic improvisation. The essay you are now reading - UPAJ - Part II - NRITYA -- examines the techniques and performance practices, which support improvisation in Kathak storytelling.

MEMORIES
I arrived at Palam Airport in the muggy, pre-monsoon heat of July 1967. It was the beginning of my first trip to India to study Kathak at Kathak Kendra with Maharaj ji (later honored as Padma Vibhushan Pandit Birju Maharaj). I lived with the Garga family in staff housing on the grounds of Bal Bhavan, the National Children's School, which had been founded by Nehru and was located a short walk from Kathak Kendra. Poppa Garga, Director of the Art Department of Bal Bhavan, had been awarded a Rockefeller grant to study in the United States in the mid-1960s. To return the hospitality he had experienced in New York City from one of my friends, Poppa and his wife welcomed me into their family like an elder sister of their three children.

Read more in the site

Please provide your name / email id along with your comment. Anonymous and derogatory comments will be removed. 

Profile - Destiny with dance - Ranee Kumar

Kuchipudi as a dance form has always been in the eye of the storm with as many advocates to swear by its authenticity and antiquity and equal or a greater number of detractors condemning its classicality and its lack of sophistication. Both are justified to a certain extent. And whatever Kuchipudi we tend to appreciate today is either from the disciples of Vempati Chinna Satyam stable in southern India or Guru Radha and Raja Reddy in the North. In such a milieu, it is refreshing to note that the present generation dancer Arunima Kumar has placed Kuchipudi on the flag post in the United Kingdom with pride and dignity. With no godfathers in a foreign soil, she rose to commendable heights by sheer dint of merit and now she has landed with her Kuchipudi at 10 Downing Street on invitation!

Read more in the site

Please provide your name / email id along with your comment. Anonymous and derogatory comments will be removed.

Dancing duos - Dance Matters: Column by Ashish Mohan Khokar

Archana-Chetana are their names. Dance is their game. Born in an SOS village, they had it hard but thanks to a genuine guru like B. Bhanumati and her sis-in-law Sheela Chandrasekhar of Bangalore, they have blossomed into fine twin talents. Their show at a spiffy chamber theatre called Shukra was full of delightful surprises of maintaining perfect symmetry, speed and substance. All through the evening they kept up a sweet smile (sometimes not necessary ALL the time while dancing) but it was genuine. They were happy to be on stage....

Shabash should be her middle name. Ananda Shabash Shankar!  Shabash (means well done or bravo ) for having worked hard in the field and come up despite no real support in initial days, coming out of Kalakshetra and taking up a full-time job with the Railways,  survived cancer, and continued to be counted in the over-crowded world of Bharatanatyam and train many students in Hyderabad through her Shankarananda Kalakshetra. The young student Neha Sathanapalli had a jump in her step and suited well some of the roles like Hanuman that demanded this sprightliness....

Read more in the site

Please provide your name / email id along with your comment. Anonymous and derogatory comments will be removed.

IIC Experience celebrates the lived traditions of South India in Dakshinayan - Taalam: column by Leela Venkataraman

Changing tack from its usual all India approach, India International Centre's celebration of its signature festival the IIC EXPERIENCE, this year in DAKSHINAYAN, put the searchlight solely on lived traditions of South India. Starting with a journey in the Art Gallery of Kamaladevi Complex on Chettinad -An Enduring Legacy (from the collection of RM Cultural Foundation, Chennai) focusing on history and heritage of this highly evolved community known for their art patronage, with a peep into the symbolism of clan temples and majestic homes of Chettiars, to Conference Room I which was the venue for an exhibition 'of texts, reproductions of archival photographs, facsimiles of rare books, digitized copies of manuscripts and other digital reproductions' from the collection of the Connemara Public Library, Chennai, on to the open grounds of Gandhi- King Plaza where Stories from the Earth comprising Terracotta Narratives, exhibited select pieces from the Sanskriti Museum of Indian Terracotta from earthen pot for drinking water to equestrian figures of the Ayyanar cult of rural Tamil Nadu. It was a plethora of projections on and from India's South.

Read more in the site

Please provide your name / email id along with your comment. Anonymous and derogatory comments will be removed. 

Obit/Tribute - Premature adieu by Prabal Gupta - Leela Venkataraman

A Bengali settled in Bangalore practicing Kathakali stree vesham - nothing about dancer Prabal Gupta seemed to fall into one inevitable connect! Much in the same vein was his sudden passing away in the prime of health, just as his career seemed to be taking an upward curve with promise of more performance opportunities.

Read more in the site

Please provide your name / email id along with your comment. Anonymous and derogatory comments will be removed.

Obit - Kathakali dancer Prabal Gupta is no more - Ashish Mohan Khokar

He died many times on stage, doing Putana Moksham or some such female centric role in Kathakali but that he really died on 14 November 2023 at just about 45 years of age is shocking to most in the dance field.

Cause of dance without a pause -- that was his life. He was like, possessed. A boy from Bengal with big, bulging eyes and bigger ambition to succeed in the dance field, he first learnt Kathakali from Fact Padmanabhan and then attached himself to Guru Sadanam Balakrishnan in Chennai. He settled in Bangalore a decade plus ago and was a very in-the-face artiste. He also wrote on dance initially for The Hindu ten plus years ago and got attention and importance but soon realised the flip side that his art suffered by giving reviews to others and that he won no friends or shows. So he stopped writing and focussed all out on dancing. He wrote for Ananya’s art magazine Kalasinchana too.

Read more in the site

Please provide your name / email id along with your comment. Anonymous and derogatory comments will be removed.

Matru Devo Bhava! - Dance Matters: Column by Ashish Mohan Khokar

Mothers are often the centre of our universe, if not universe itself (remember li'l Ganesha going around his parents thrice in circumambulation, to denote he had gone around the universe, while his brother Kartikeya set out globetrotting physically and returned many aeons later?) and so when a star-dancer like Prashant Gopal Shastry mounts a homage function in memory of his parents Prabhavathi and Gopal Shastry then there was many a teary-eyed in the ADA Rangamandira, Bangalore, on the 4th of November 2023.

Read more in the site

Please provide your name / email id along with your comment. Anonymous and derogatory comments will be removed.

Natya Tarangini's Parampara Festival marks its 27th celebration - Taalam: column by Leela Venkataraman

 It is an achievement for the celebrated Reddy trio of Raja/Radha and Kaushalya, under the banner of their institution Natya Tarangini (officially registered in 1976), to be marking the 27th celebration of what has become their signature festival, Parampara. One recollects, with some amusement, the query asked by a generally cynical critic when the festival was first announced. "In the present scenario where are the Paramparas we are celebrating?" Had the person concerned been in our midst today, one wonders how he would have reacted to how the institution of guru /shishya transmission has undergone changes to accommodate a fast moving world, with a Parampara festival now sponsoring Contemporary Dance and Fusion music with an interaction between the tabla and western drums, with other instruments like the keyboard and electric sitar! But one still speaks of the old ragas, and rhythmic patterns following tisra, chatusra, khanda, misra and sankeerna combinations! As time travels, notions and institutions from the past too undergo changes, and though Pariwar Paramparas do exist, children of traditional music and dance families, often take to other professions. The festival (Oct 6 - 8, 2023) opening with Hampi Vaibhavam was Raja's clever idea.....

One realizes that institutions run by individual dancers have to contend with steep competition - for room at the top for performance opportunities and recognition is limited. But one would expect a modicum of fellow feeling binding dancers as professional colleagues, for without this, performing art space would be stifling. I am mentioning this aspect because in the recent Bharatanatyam performance in the capital on the occasion of the 78th anniversary of Bharatha Natya Kala Mandir located in Mumbai, with a performance by Valerie Kanti Fernando, disciple of Guru Harikrishna Kalyanasundaram, I was shocked to see about thirty persons seated in the Kamani auditorium! Not a single recognizable face of a Bharatanatyam performer, or of any of the eminent artistes running institutions, did I see.... 

Read more in the site

Please provide your name / email id along with your comment. Anonymous and derogatory comments will be removed.

Anita says...November 2023

 WORDS WHISPERED TO A CHILD UNDER SIEGE

(An excerpt)

No, we are not going to die
The sounds your hear
Knocking the windows and
Chipping the paint from the ceiling
That is a game
The world is playing
Our task is to crouch in the dark as long as we can
And count the beats of our own hearts

Sing. Sing louder
Those aren't boot steps
Those aren't sirens
Those aren't flames
Close your eyes.
Like chess. Like hide and seek
When this game is done you get another life.

By Joseph Fasano

It is a strange time to be talking and thinking about dance and art. But it is never a wrong time to reinforce our belief in the power of the creative soul to illuminate the darkest corner's hate.

We are smack in the midst of colourful festivals, filled social calendars, busy travel schedules and of course, the inevitable rehearsals and preparations for the annual cultural season in India and everywhere. The colours of autumn are at their glorious peak in North America and temperatures in India are beginning their downward dip. I am not including the Southern Hemisphere countries who are readying for SUMMER! (I still find it hard to adjust to that state of mind and body!)

It is the best time of the year and our international colleagues are beginning to arrive - now a trickle, but the momentum will gather steam in the coming weeks. Prepare for the deluge!

Read more in the site

Please provide your name / email id along with your comment. Anonymous and derogatory comments will be removed.