They are in sync, both in dance and life. A perfect young dancing couple, N Srikanth and his wife Aswathy Srikanth regaled the rasikas with their mudras and lucid expressions. For the duo, ‘amrithavarshini’ is not just another dance performance, but a guru dakshina to their guide, Kalamandalam Saraswathy, who was recently honoured with the Nrittha Natya Puraskaram for her exemplary contribution to dance.
Multi tasking between dance and life, Aswathy and Srikanth says that “Life has been a dancing routine so far.” For the daughter of M T Vasudevan Nair and Kalamandalam Saraswathy, Aswathy had given up a career in literature studies to be a dancer. “I grew up watching my mom dance. So when it came for choosing a career, I knew right away that dancing was the choice for me,” she says.
“When we thought of a gift fitting for mother’s achievement, we couldn’t think of anything outside dance,” says the duo. Amrithavarshini, the brain child of the dance duo was purely contemporary in concept and classical in production. “It took us nearly two years to work on the project,” says Srikanth.
The 90 min performance had a multi lingual recital backing and the lyrics were researched from various texts including the Rig Veda. The couple was accompanied by the students of Nrithyalaya, the dance school run by Kalamandalam Saraswathy. As for Sreekanth, a well accomplished dancer, nattuvanar and a beloved disciple of Padma Subramaniam, the migration from the lap of art forms in Chennai to Malabar has doubled his potential to a hardcore dancer, according to him. “Back in Chennai I was a renowned artist. But nothing would have given me so much of happiness and satisfaction that I enjoy today. It was my noble responsibility to give the best to Nrithyalaya,” says Sreekanth. “With a skilful partner around you, duet performances are always challenging. But above all, there is always the comfy element in dancing with your spouse and that erases all the tension associated with it,” says Aswathy, who was a student of Sreekanth.
Sreekanth, a skilful artist in Bhagawata Mela, the traditional dance drama of Tamil Nadu, has been a regular performer in the sabhas of Chennai, having shared the stage with eminent classical maestros including Chithra Vishweshwar, Malavika Sarukki and Anitha Rethnam to name a few. Having trained the nuances of bharathanatyam under Sreekanth, Aswathy adds “He is a strict teacher giving no room for compromises.” A postgraduate in English Literature, Aswathi is also a graded artist in Doordarshan for both bharathanatyam and mohiniyattam. Apart from being regular performers in India and abroad, they are also the cultural consultants for the Nrithyalaya dance school.