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THE ARTS: SRI
New
Nuances From Nrityagram
The much hyped dance ensemble
survives the tragedy of its founder's death and premieres its first original
presentation in the capital
By S.
Kalidas
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ALLURING
BODY LINE: The ensemble in Sri |
It was an evening
laden with nostalgia, metaphors and references. Seven years after they
were last seen in the capital, the Nrityagram Dance Ensemble (NDE) premiered
its new full length work, Sri: In Search of the Goddess, last week. With
friends and wellwishers flying down from Bangalore and Mumbai, the presence
of Nrityagram's tempestuous founder Protima Gauri Bedi loomed palpably
in the overcrowded Kamani Auditorium mocking the calamity that consumed
her at hilly Malpa in August 1998.
Not too originally, Sri ... is a longish presentation
exploring the different aspects of the female energy/divinity and is divided
into distinct halves. Somewhat like ardhanareeswara (the half-man, half-woman
aspect of Shiva), the two parts of Surupa Sen's choreography are starkly
contrasting in form and treatment.
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Sen and Satpathy in Srimati
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The first part, done in an eclectic contemporary
idiom, is an interesting minimalistic visualisation of Sri Aurobindo's
Savitri based on the mythological story of Satyavan-Savitri in which the
heroine wins a debate with Yama, the God of death, to bring her dead husband
Satyavan back to life. Touching as this tale might be it is a curious
prelude to the work as Savitri is not considered a rupa (form) of Sri
or the Devi. Neither is Radha for that matter. Sri is another name for
Lakshmi who, along with Saraswati and Parvati, merges into the greater
concept of the Devi in all her various rupas which Sen herself took up
in the abridged shloka from the Chandi Paath, "Ya Devi Sarvabhuteshu
..." So conceptually, while Sen takes Sri to be a generic principle
applicable to all womankind whether goddesses or mortals, in the Sanskritic
tradition the reference is only to the divine aspects of the Devi. Mortal
women like Ahalya, Sita, Tara, Draupadi and Mandodari have been grouped
as pancha kanya, but that is another story.
The second half of the presentation is traditional
Odissi and comprises three cleverly packaged sections-Sridevi, Srimati
and Srimayi-which, more or less, correspond to the mangalacharan (invocation)-pallavi
(pure dance)-ashtapadi (mimetic narrative) repertoire format.
On the artistic and creative front, this was
NDE's first presentation conceived, choreographed and executed completely
on its own steam with musical scores composed by the young violinist duo
Ganesh-Kumaresh for the first half and the venerable grandmaster of Odissi
music, Raghunath Panigrahi, for the second half. Sri ... is laudable as
a first effort but Sen needs to mature considerably both in intellectual
and formal levels to acquire depth and clarity of purpose. However, with
age and exposure on her side, she could get there sooner rather than later.
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"Protima's
legacy continues to inspire us and we're now booked for seven months
a year in the US."
Lynn Fernandez
Administrative Director, Nrityagram
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Contrary to what most critics have been carping
about, it is the modernistic first half that actually promises a leap
forward in terms of choreographic possibilities. And in young Bharat Rao,
NDE has found and trained a male dancer with great poise and potential.
The Odissi items are finely executed with the pallavi bit in Srimati turning
out to be very charming indeed. However, Sen gained no brownie points
for announcing that the interpretation of the famous Jayadeva song "Sakhi
he keshi madanamudaram" that she was presenting was not the version
choreographed by Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra but her own under the guidance
of Kalanidhi Narayanan. In fact the redolent eroticism of the piece-where
Radha elaborately describes her first love-making act with Krishna-was,
if anything, a trifle underplayed almost as if out of a Brahminical bashfulness.
In the past two years many in the dance world
have been worried about the fate of Nrityagram with Protima no longer
around. Well, on the financial front at least with benefactors like Jonathan
Soros (son of billionaire-philanthropist George Soros) and now the New
England Foundation for the Arts, they are doing very well, thank you.
"We now have a professional agent in New
York who keeps us busy in the United States seven months a year,"
informs Lynn Fernandez, who apart from doing the lights also manages Nrityagram's
multifarious administrative affairs. With their performance fee ranging
from $15,000-20,000 (up to Rs 9 lakh) per show, money is no longer a worry.
Conceived rather idealistically by Protima as
a village for all the traditional dance forms of India just over a decade
ago, Nrityagram was a grand dream too hyped up and too simplistic to work
out in reality. For the better part of its existence, it was painfully
short of funds and facilities but did have a galaxy of top classical gurus
giving their time and cooperation. This cooperation, though, came with
all the capricious, outdated arrogance that our much romanticised guru-shishya
parampara fosters. So like the ITC Sangeet Research Academy or Kalakshetra,
this experiment at yet another "institutionalised gurukul" too
was bound to sail on troubled waters.
Over the years, bit by painful bit, the naive
idealism of the initial phase has been all but washed away. Today, when
they are flush with funds, Nrityagram ironically has no guru to boast
of. It is now a much more limited, lean and focused Odissi dance school
and ensemble run by three very competent young devis in residence: the
cool and pragmatic Fernandez, the fiery and passionate Sen and the sinuous
lead dancer, Bijayini Satpathy.
It is this trio which is going to shape Nrityagram's
future. Given the devotion each of them has to Protima's memory-and to
the act of dance itself-Nrityagram will survive. Yet, it is an institution
still in the process of growing and carving an identity for itself. And
that in itself is reason enough to keep a watch on it.
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