New trend to keep the epics alive

Arundhuti Banerjee

More and more dancers of the day are showing affiliation towards doing new and rarely performed choreographic compositions. So, if it is Ramayana, it is not just the story of Sita, but also Mandodari whose story gets depicted and if it is Mahabharata, Subhadra along with Draupadi is the theme of the dance recital.

“All the choreographic presentations in our classical dances are based on traditional text, either from Ramayana, Mahabharata or other epics like Panchatantra and Puranas. And so, the episodes of these epics are very popular and people tend to relate to them. But after a certain point of time, performers and audience both look for something new to get entertained,” said Kathak and Vilasini Natyam dancer Sanjay Joshi who is working on his production, based on an episode from Ramayana where he is going to show the interaction between Rama, Ravana and his sister Surpanakha.

Kuchipudi exponent Dr Anupama Kailash shared the artist’s point of view. “Recently I have done choreography on ‘Subhadra Vilapam’ for Doordarshan where I have shown three different shades of emotion- friction, sorrow and anger after her son Abhimunya’s death. While developing the character choreographically, as a dancer, I was going through a complete emotional journey,” said the dancer. According to her, working on a new character gives an artist, opportunity to grow with her creativity.

Such kind of dance items also let the audience know about a particular character more elaborately said Deepika Reddy, the renowned Kuchipudi dancer. She has shown the journey of Mandodari’s character from a frog to the wife of Ravana in different phases of her life, through a dance piece. “Though Mandodari is not a popular character, she is a strong woman. I presented her persona and beauty and the various shades of emotions in one of my dance performances,” shared the dancer.
So, is it becoming a new way to educate our younger generation and keeping our tradition alive? It does seem like the audience in general and younger generation in particular learn newer aspects of our mythology.

Bharatanatyam
dancer Ananda Shankar, however, does not consider such experimental work as rare rendition. “There are various versions of the same epic. And I am familiar with them, so as an audience I do not consider them as rare. Our audience or youngsters find them new or rare as they are losing their habit of reading.” As an answer to the same question, Kathak exponent Mangala Bhat said, “As a dancer when I compose something, I do not always keep my audience in mind.

But yes, sometimes we purposely choreograph some dance item to reach out to a younger audience. Though dance is not the only way to keep our history and tradition alive, I strongly believe that interested youngsters will find their way through dance or history books.”

Rarely showcased mythological characters and historical episodes as dance themes for Kuchipudi, Bharatanatyam and Kathak performances, seem to be the order of the day