Theatre & Dance: Special Series; Malavika Sarukkai

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Dec 6, 1999

SPECIAL SERIES

Malavika Sarukkai, 38
Bharatnatyam Dancer

MS PERFECT
When Malavika Sarukkai was picked for the first festival of India in 1982 in the UK it created a big furore. Senior establishment dancers damned the selectors for bypassing them and placing their bet on "an unknown entity".

If Sarukkai were haughty, her answer today would have been, "hmmph". She is easily the most accomplished Bharatnatyam dancer of her generation with little by way of competition from her school -- style or beyond.

Sarukkai's bodyline has always been perfection itself; the lithe lady is all about incredible geometry. But just as critics were taking her for granted as a technically brilliant but intellectually and emotionally indifferent dancer, Sarrukai reinvented herself. Among other things, she has gone contemporary. She takes themes like the environment and fuses them into a form shorn of jewellery and rich costumes to simple, stunning choreography. As other dancers played bandwagon with Kargil, she took the war-panels from Khajuraho friezes as a backdrop, and created an entirely new dance-drama. As eminent critic Leela Venkatraman says, "She has learned to give voice to her inner self." We hear it.

-S. Kalidas

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