Not just anyBODY: a health and fitness column - Strength training for dancers - Jyotsna John

The human body thrives on movement. Well-planned, purposeful movement is the foundation to a healthy body and restrictions in movement can hinder our ability to fully experience life.
Dance is one of the more complex forms of movement. It is performed as a sequence but consists mostly of random movement. Random, in that it does not have a well-defined scientific structure to it and any move performed gracefully and to a beat can constitute dance.


Read the article in the site

Not just anyBODY: a health and fitness column - Health Recipes 4: Quinoa stir fry wrap - Uma Pushpanathan

Serves: 2
Per Serving: 500kj
Cooking and Preparation Time: 30 minutes

View the recipe in the site

Mother and daughter or daughter and mother? - Aniruddha Knight

Mother, daughter, guru, disciple, friend, caretaker - a vast complex web that defined the enigma of a relationship between Balasaraswati and Lakshmi. In Balamma’s youth, her mother Jayammal played the role of manager, accompanist, mother, and guru. Through a very rocky relationship, they were the two pillars that defined what we call “dance music” (the actual method of singing for dance) today. In Balamma’s latter part of her career, particularly from the early 1960s, Lakshmi played the essential role of maintaining and pushing Balamma’s career. From ensuring the financial stability of the family to redesigning of her costume, Lakshmi was pivotal in making sure Balamma’s career moved forward in a world that was unfamiliar and unappealing to Balamma. Until Balamma’s last breath, Lakshmi was her caretaker. Balamma’s battles with cancer, diabetes, rheumatic fever and heart disease were battles that were equally fought by my mother as her own. As Balamma aged, the line between who was mother and who was daughter had blurred even further. Even 15 years after Balamma’s passing, my mother got so used to cooking and eating without salt (Balamma’s heart disease) that she would constantly forget to add salt in our meals at home!


Read the article in the site

Journeying into woman dancer’s inner world - Taalam: column by Leela Venkataraman

An uncharacteristic evening in more ways than one sponsored by Aim for Seva, as part of its fund raising efforts, ‘Antar Yatra’, conceived by Odissi artist Sharmila Biswas, was premiered in Chennai at the Music Academy auditorium on July 16. Woven round three dance forms of Bharatanatyam, Kuchipudi and Odissi from contiguous regions of the Indian Coast of the Coromandel, Antar Yatra is in the nature of a journey delving into the inner recesses of the woman dancer’s landscape of mind and thoughts. 

Read the review in the site

Footloose and fancy free with Dr. Sunil Kothari - Aishwarya Nityananda’s Bharatanatyam recital was visual poetry

Disciple of Guru Radha Sridar, Aishwarya Nityananda from Bangalore performed at the Habitat Centre in New Delhi. She choreographed a special thematic program ‘Leela Mohana Krishna’ centring round Krishna’s multiple personalities – as a god child, prankster, a model lover, hero and Supreme Being. Krishna’s various leelas were portrayed through compositions soaked in love and devotion.


Read the review in the site

Bharatanatyam duo at California’s Chinmaya Mission - Taalam: column by Leela Venkataraman

It was for me intriguingly unlike the usual run of programmes watching a recital titled ‘After Arangetram’ in California’s Irvine district - for it was after more than a decade that I was witnessing Bharatanatyam in the States, by dancers from Arpana, an established school in Irvine, run by Ramya Harishankar. It was that unmistakable Indo-American ambiance at the Los Angeles Chinmaya Centre auditorium, notwithstanding saree-clad volunteers ushering in ticket holders (unlike the Indian situation where most programmes are for an invited audience. 

Of the two disciples of Ramya Harishankar featured in the programme, Kanthi Atreya and Visalini Sundaram, Visalini had had her arangetram a couple of years ago, while Kanthi the partner, studying medicine, was described as regarding Bharatanatyam as an ‘oxymoron’ giving her freedom of expression within a prescribed grammar. Suffice it to say that much like such events elsewhere, the performance clearly showed an enthusiastic duo with a joy in rendering the dance. While Visalini whose dance has the ground work, is sure to evolve with time and experience, Kanthi Atreya’s dance which has a certain flair, showed the need for more internalized emotion and less of the exuberant torso and neck deflections, tending to smudge the Bharatanatyam body line.  

Read the review in the site

Tribute - Kavalam: Guru non-pareil - Methil Devika

It was yet another sleepy day at a national seminar on Mohiniyattam two decades ago. I remember the newspapers, for that extra punch, even carried a picture of me dozing while a scholar presented his paper.
During one such mid-day snooze at the 10-day seminar, something caught my attention. It was not the usual history or sampradayas that we had been mercilessly subjected to in the preceding days. Neither did the speaker throw up borrowed words of some author or scholar. On the contrary, what I heard was something so pragmatic, rustic, yet greatly appealing. I woke up to Kavalam Narayana Panikkar and to Mohiniyattam.

Read the tribute in the site