CHENNAI: Dressed in bright costumes, dancers across age groups took to the stage. As the lights dimmed, the bejewelled stones lit up their faces, evoking stories through their bhava. Delicately and gracefully, the dancers matched their steps to the rhythmic lyrics and dazzled the audience.
Krishnanjali Academy paid tribute to Kalakshetra’s founder Rukmini Devi Arundale and Krishnaveni Lakshmanan, guru of Balagurunathan who is the head of Krishnanjali, with Bharatanatyam performances at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan on Friday. The recitals were in the Kalakshetra style of dance.
The evening began with Lokesh Raj, instructor at Kalakshetra, who invoked Goddess Saraswati through his solo recital, followed by a Jathiswaram in Bhairavi ragam and Rupaka talam choreographed by Rukmini Devi Arundale. It was a fast-paced item based on rhythmic patterns. The third piece was a varnam in Natta Karunjini called Challamela varnam, which was also choreographed by Rukmini Devi. This is usually the central item in any Bharatanatyam recital.
Lokesh was accompanied by Sheejith Krishna on the cymbals and Siva Prasad on mridangam. Siva’s beats supported Lokesh with the crisp jathis in the Jathiswaram and Varnam pieces. Sai Shankar provided vocal support and KP Nandini played the violin.
This was followed by a performance by Krishnanjali’s senior students who depicted the different tandavams like Urdhva tandavam, Sandhya tandavam, Ananda tandavam and Srishti tandavam under the theme Param. Urdhva tandavam is a piece where Siva and Kali are competing and finally Siva lifts his leg and Parvati is unable to do so.
In Ananda tandavam, Siva performs with joy. This production was set to multiple ragams forming ragamalika from Kedaram, Rasika Priya, Kalyani, Kambhoji among others and talamalika with Adi talam and Khanda Chapu talam.
The artistes who performed included Arya Lakshmi, Sundaresan, Vishnu Bhasi, Abhijeet PK, B Mayura, Krishna, B Hamsa and Chippi, led by Balaraghunathan, who manages the group and organised the programme. Srividya accompanied them on the nattuvangam, Nagarajan played the mridangam, Gomathy Nayakam was the vocalist, K Sivaraman played the violin and Shashidhar played the flute. The lyrics were by professor Vavesu and the composition was by TK Padmanabhan.