KOCHI: Born in the border district of Tamil Nadu and Kerala, her passion for dance had her swaying from the geometrically perfect and sculpture-like steps of Bharatnatyam towards the graceful movements of the classical dance form of her native land. She realised that Mohiniyattam was her calling. Rekha Raju was initiated into Bharatnatyam at the age of three under Guru Padmini Ramachandran after she left for Bengaluru from Palakkad and ever since she has been essaying it with elan. Soon she was exposed to Mohiniyattam as well when she trained under Kalamandalam Usha Datar and took to it with ease. She realised she could express and communicate better through the art form.
"I learnt both the dance forms and as I matured I felt that Mohiniyattam suited me better with lots of scope for 'abhinaya'," she says. Her love for Mohiniyattam took her to Gopika Varma in Kerala and now she is training under Guru Prof Janardhanan of Kalakshetra.
“I don’t go to learn an item. I choreograph my piece and present it to him. I completed my PhD last June from Mysore University in 'Margi and desi techniques of Mohiniyattam and Bharatnatyam' with focus on Mohiniyattom. Based on my thesis I experimented a Mohiniyattam piece to the accompaniment of early classical instruments such as violin, chenda, edakka, maddalam, thakil, mridangam for the kritis of Dikshitar and Papanasam Sivan.
Next she choreographed another piece to the tunes of Meera Bhajan. Being in Karnataka, Kannada colours crept into the dance form. She got the music composed for D V Gundappa’s poetry by selecting four in his 'Antahpura Geete' and she says that the response when she performed to its tunes was awesome.
She wants to explore the 'thalam' with percussion alone --'mridangam' and 'edakka'. "I also want to do a Bhakti piece based on Thankamani Kutty's poems," she says.
"I watch Bharati Shivaji and Neena Prasad religiously."
After many performances across the country and abroad, she set up Nrithya Dhama Temple of Fine Arts in Bengaluru. She has students coming from different universities from the US and UK mainly under the exchange programme. Rekha has won many awards, the latest being the Bharath Nritya Samrat award at the Nagpur Dance Festival this month and she has been invited by the University of Nagpur to conduct workshops in Mohiniyattam for college and school students. She toured the rural parts of Rajasthan and UP through SPICMACAY to hold Mohiniyattam demonstrations in government schools where Mohiniyattam was a new word.