So, as the Gregorian calendar year ends and a new one starts, what are our principal take home points?1. Dancers never had it so good! Even ordinary ones are busy dancing here, there, everywhere. Dubai, London, Odisha, Kerala. USA of course is second home to most. Add the odd Australia or Africa in between and our dancers, if not dance, has truly gone global. There are number of festivals and functions, affording most an opportunity to show their talent, or often, the lack of it! Some are very active with huge outreach thanks to real art; others thanks to their overzealous husbands / godfathers / sidekicks / students / parents / forced fan club or lovers besotted with them! They spend many office hours posting pouting pics on FB as if they are wares! And art is a commodity. They have made it so.
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Sarita Mishra, disciple of Yudhisthir Nayak and Bichitrananda Swain, moved in 2013 to Bangaluru. She established Adhyasha Foundation to teach Odissi with a cross section of disciples from diverse fields - banking, designing, professional interior designers, from IT, housewives, dancers from different dance styles and also foreigners. Within a short time, there was rapid growth of the foundation with the result that Sarita set up few branches. Within a short time, she has won appreciation from local established senior dancers and gurus and her two day annual festival is eagerly awaited.
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End-November and early December saw quite a pleasant outburst of choreographic creativity in the eastern metropolis, on both classical and contemporary fronts. While Kathak brought out a novel linkage with Baul singing of the village Bengal, Odissi saw a wonderfully vivid tryst of the women dancers with their inner domain, alongside gorgeous sets and subliminal illumination. On one side, Bharatanatyam went back to the Upanishad mooring of Satyam, Jnanam, Anantam; on the other side was an exhilarating contemporary exploration with "hugging the floor", in a near literary sense. To cap it all, there was an inner, extrapolated journey of classical dance visualized in a sumptuous stage. All in all, the exhilaration induced a euphoric sense of joy with a nip in the air, to match!
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Entertainment is an activity performed to hold an audience's attention with the purpose of delivering pleasure.Dance is a performing art form consisting of purposefully selected movements with a symbolic aesthetic value.Classical means a representation of an exemplary standard within a sufficiently long-established form or style.Considering these definitions, a classical dance performance can be defined as: A standard form or style of purposefully conceived movements that are specifically selected with the purpose of keeping an audience's attention. This, however, alters the meaning and intention of a classical dance performance.As I sat to watch an extravagant spectacle of a classical dance production by an extremely popular classical dance company from Bangalore, whose dancers are revered as young stars, I could not but help observe aspects that now dictate the intention of this process, its consequences, and its success factors.
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It is either everything or nothing when it comes to performance opportunities for a dancer in India. Performance space has been cornered by a handful of dancers who in most cases have had the good fortune to combine talent with power to influence the right decision making forces. Make no mistake; the latter has a big role to play in the scheme of things.What happens within the Guru/shishya teaching and learning arena remains largely outside reflection in the performance circuit. Which is why Ashok Vajpeyi, under the Raza Foundation umbrella of activities, very astutely started Uttaradhikar series for the young dancers, many of who would seem to struggle endlessly for platforms to perform. He is providing a regular platform (at least once a month) but on the recommendations of the Guru, who ultimately will be judged on the basis of the student's calibre. Two day events feature one promising young musician and one dancer every evening.
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Femme Fatale has usually been a pejorative term in the English language. But in the Dionysian world of theatre - first celebrated for the god of wine in ancient Greece -- Femme Fatales could very aptly describe the brave feminine front that has emerged in the two theatre-conscious metropolises. In Delhi, this critic knew the quartet of fiery female directors from the charmed circle of NSD: Neelam Mansingh, Anuradha Kapoor, Kirti Jain and Tripurari Sharma who have, together, created virtually a creative storm in the world of avant garde theatre in Hindi, and Joy Michael of 'Yatrik' in English theatre. In Kolkata, following the exemplary footsteps of the iconic Tripti Mitra - whose directorial oeuvre, beginning from Dakghar (1957), her solo classic Aparajita (1971), her Hindi ventures Guria Ghar (1980) and Sanjh Dhaley (1985), up to her last direction, Sarisrip (1987) had created waves among the cognoscente -- the suave Sohag Sen appeared and there has been no looking back ever since.If one attempts a very brief recapitulation of the thirteen major women directorial talents active today in the Kolkata drama scene - in no particular chronological order -- whose impact on Bengali theatre has been nothing less than an artistic Tsunami, Sohag Sen would stand foremost, with her forte in depicting urban middle class. Having directed plays by dramatists as varied as Mahesh Elkunchwar and Botho Strauss, her association with theatre and allied media spans a period of almost sixty years. As an actor, she started her career under the guidance of the legendary Utpal Dutt in the year 1969 and her latest directorial venture Chhota Chabi (reviewed in these columns), was very well received in 2019.
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On 28th November all roads led to Nariman Point to National Centre for the Performing Arts in Mumbai. The occasion was the grand celebrations of 50 years of the Centre. Associated with NCPA for more than 40 years, it was for me a sentimental journey. The large crowd of aficionados, dancers, musicians, painters, drama directors, actors, music lovers, in particular from the Parsi community, moved to Jamshed Bhabha Theatre, the large auditorium named after Jamshed Bhabha, the patron and Trustee of NCPA. Almost modeled on the Garnier, Paris Opera House, with two side marble staircases and imposing foyer, it was bustling with who is who of Mumbai's art loving public.
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