Dance in times of distress

Mellifluous renditions, thematic dance presentations, live jam sessions and curated conversations.
Eleven Bharatanatyam artistes will perform live
Eleven Bharatanatyam artistes will perform live

CHENNAI: Mellifluous renditions, thematic dance presentations, live jam sessions and curated conversations. Artistes and art lovers across the globe are using social media to entertain patrons and keep their spirits high within the comfort of their homes. Hope In Times Of Corona, a campaign by Aalaap, city-based performing art consulting and management outfit, has used its Instagram page, aalaap _concepts, for artistes to engage and interact with the audience virtually. 

“It’s been three weeks since we started these live sessions. In our first session, Sounds like a Dream, we brought together 12 musicians to play for us. In the second session, Through His Lens, eight male dancers entertained us with different abhinayas. We’ve also done a few podcasts with artistes around the world. The response, particularly for our live sessions, has been great with 1,000 viewers. We will also be doing more process-oriented programmes and have a couple of projects lined up,” says Akhila Krishnamurthy, founder, Aalaap. 

The upcoming session is a marathon series of women-centric episodes titled Her, By Her, where 11 Bharatanatyam artistes, including Aishwarya Balasubramaniam, Karuna Sagari, Parvathy Menon, Rukmini Vijayakumar, Divya Shiva Sundar, Meenakshi Srinivasan, Dakshina Vaidyanathan, Anjana Anand, Meera Sreenarayanan, Kavya Muralidharan, and Manasvini Ramachandran, will be performing a 30-minute piece each on an aspect of a woman’s personality through the eyes of another woman. 

Artistes were requested to perform for the campaign’s live sessions at just a week’s notice. City-based dancer Parvathy Menon is performing in an Instagram live session for the first time. “I always dance with my husband but this one’s going to be a solo performance. I’m thrilled to meet my audience this way. I’ll be performing a piece on Radha bidding farewell to Krishna. It’s a Surdas bhajan. Another one is conceptualised on a conversation between Goddesses Parvati and Lakshmi exchanging views on their respective husbands. The last one is a portrayal of how a lotus blooms in the presence of sunlight with a few lines from Kalidas’s Megadhoota.

If this can help lift people’s spirit then why not?,” shares Parvathy. Danseuse Dakshina Vaidyanathan, who has done a few live sessions enjoys this new medium. “I’m depicting a piece from my production on Shurpanakha. It’s a different take on Ramayana. Right from the feelings that she goes through after seeing Rama in the forest until walking away from him — it’s an interpretation of the reason behind the motive, the way her character is sketched, and the unspoken story. I’ll miss the expressions on the audiences’ faces. All that matters is putting a smile on their faces when they’re stuck within four walls and transporting them to a musical world,” says the New Delhi-based artiste. Her, By her will be streaming live on Instagram page aalaap_concepts on April 18 from 5 pm to 10.30 pm

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