Renowned Bharathanatyam danseuse Savitha Sastry showcased her latest masterpiece ‘Chains: Love Stories of Shadows’ at Ravindra Bharathi recently. The production, which was premiered in national and international tour, is an ode to women. Based on an original story, Savitha enacts the life of a woman caught on the thin line between personal choice and societal expectations.
Savitha Sastry is credited to have brought about a revolutionary change in the way Bharathanatyam is presented. Her path-breaking work has been acclaimed as a ‘renaissance’ by critics and audiences the world-over, earning her the affectionate epithet of a ‘dancing storyteller’. Without straying from the grammar of Bharathanatyam, Savitha has managed to make the esoteric and highly codified dance form accessible to all without compromising on its aesthetics. ‘Chains: Love Stories of Shadows’, is a production that rips apart the masks we everyday people wear through our lives, exposing and exploring the real freedom of choice that our society accords to us. Chains takes a long hard look at a woman and her life. Savitha Sastry has already taken Bharathanatyam out of a mythological and religious framework with her earlier productions - this time spirituality makes an exit too. What we have is the age-old question that lurks just below the surface with decades or centuries even, of societally conditioned thought - is there room in a woman’s life to do what she wants, or is her life a compromise of the expectations of her family and the society she lives in? Times have evolved, the parameters broadened, but there still exists a fence. ‘Chains’ explores the dividing line between free will and compromise.
‘Chains’ is based on writer AK Srikanth’s trilogy - a story that carries with it the intensity of a tempest. When Savitha, delivers the raging, tumultuous tale of bondage with her grace and lucidity, the effect is a visual epiphany. She brings the art alive for even an audience that is uninterested in the classical Indian dance forms. The experience is accentuated by the musical score of Rajkumar Bharathi, ebbing and flowing magnificently with the narrative. The lush soundscape, vibrancy of the costumes and the technology of lights all make it an experience in art and life - one that cannot be forgotten.
‘Chains: Love Stories of Shadows’ is based on a trilogy of short stories by AK Srikanth. The first part of the story follows the vivacious sixteen year-old girl named Vichitra, the cynosure of all eyes, who falls in love with Adhvik, a shy, gauche boy with Asperger’s syndrome. Her intense love story is brought to a grinding halt by her parents leaving Vichitra with an experience that aged her beyond the sixteen years of her life.
Vichitra’s life by the day is one of a dutiful wife, mother, daughter-in-law and in her sleep, she enters forbidden territory to become a diva, whom the world stops to applaud. Choosing to live more and more in her dream world, the lines between reality and fantasy start to blur. The second part is a metaphysical dive into freedom of choice in a woman’s life.
In the third part, Vichitra, now an old lady, lives alone and has made solitude her companion. While her children and neighbours worry about her sanity and senility, she tries to accept her state and makes peace with her life. She has finally accepted that lover who never spoke, but followed her, chained to her like her shadow. This lover was solitude, and this was finally the love that would last forever.