The evenings were blissful with relatives dropping in to meet her grandmother. The little one in the family would gather an audience, jump on to the dining table and dance. The applauds only grew louder with time for Delhi-based Kathak danseuse Aditi Mangaldas.
While her parents enrolled her for Bharatnatyam classes, she followed her best friend to Kumudini Lakhia at Kadamb in Ahmedabad. “I fell in love with my Guru the first time I met her. And when I reflect back, I feel it was the best thing that happened to me as the spontaneity in Kathak suited my personality,” she says. After her college, she joined Kathak Kendram Delhi. She learnt to love the form as a human and feel its all encompassing beauty from the maestro, Birju Maharaj.
Aditi, however, was never satisfied with just the technique and kinetics of the dance. Wanderlust, she travelled through various parts of her body creating fleeting images in space.
While she dominates the stage with her feminine grace, her innovative pieces have audience on the edge of their seat mesmerised by its sheer power and brilliance. It’s beauty and rhythm all the way. Perhaps, it came naturally to this student of Kumudini Lakhia, one of the pioneers to lend contemporary directions to Kathak.
She made the leap into contemporary with a piece on claustrophobia in 1986. The ‘shingar ras’ of traditional form didn’t allow her the liberty to portray the dry emotion. “The ‘thika’ of tabla formed the sound base of the performance from where I developed the piece,” she says.
With Kathak as the springboard, Aditi choreographs most of her contemporary items extending the stylistic boundaries of the dance form with Kalaripayattu and Yoga. “The process is similar to peeling the outer layers of an onion. The crust remains and sprinkled with salt (modern sensibilities) to appeal to the senses,” she says.
Aditi does not view it as an aberration. “Tradition is not constant. It flows like a river imbibing all that comes its way. Woven in the fabric of classical form, they add to the traditional repertoire and with time become ‘parampara’,” she says.
The attire too speaks loud of her innovate approach. “I try to keep it simple. The clothes need to enhance the dance more than the dancer,” she says. While the Rajasthani cholis add grace to dance, pyjamas make the base movement more profound.
While in the city for the Sanjukta-Raghunath Panigrahi festival of dance and music, Aditi performed a traditional piece. “The occasions have been such that I stuck to Kathak,” says. She and her group had earlier performed at Dhauli and Konark dance festivals. While Aditi could not make it to the contemporary dance festival recently organised here due to prior engagements, she is all praise for Bhubaneswar audience.
“It has been only one-and-half-year since I started performing here. There is a sense of culture in the air and the audience educated, which add to the whole ambience,” she says.