THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Eleven-year-old Pooja P R would keep switching her dance classes as no dance form would sustain her interest. And one day, her mother showed her a kathak performance video and that had her hooked. “After attending a workshop, I joined the classes. And, now I am part of the kathak family!,” says Pooja proudly. “I did learn other dances but those didn’t excite me. But the fast movements and turns in kathak lured me into it and I enjoy doing it,” she says.
Pooja is the youngest of the lot of students who did their ‘rang pravesh’ at Vyloppilli Samskrithi Bhavan on Sunday.With its swift and lively twirls, dynamic pirouettes, complex footwork and fluidity in movements, kathak has enthralled generations. It is one dance form which continues to put one in trance with its graceful-yet-sharp movements. This centuries-old dance, which is a unique blend of Mughal and Hindu traditions, continues to entice the people in the state and has now permeated into the cultural milieu. And, this is precisely why the dance studio of kathak artiste Monisa Nayak has an eclectic mix of students. So you have little Pooja, the working women, men and even students who have no background in dance, united in their passion to learn this classical dance from North India.
It will be one year since Monisa Nayak started her class in the city and now 13 of her students will make a grand entry to the stage, with the rang pravesh on Sunday. This is Monisa’s first batch of students and she is as excited as her students for the event. “It has been a wonderful journey moulding these children. They have shown so much zeal in pursuing Kathak. I have older students as well and I have noticed that they are driven purely by passion,” she adds.
Monisa follows the Jaipur gharana and is based in Delhi. She is a disciple of Pandit Rajendra Gangani and started learning the art form at the early age of seven. Although the kathak exponent has her hands full with programmes, she ensures that during her one-week visit to the city, the students get trained to perfection.
Though she tries experimenting with different themes, she ensures that the experimentations are limited to the tenets of kathak. “The purity of the dance form should remain and should not be diluted,” she says. She has no qualms in choreographing the dance form based on contemporary themes. “The onus is also on the artiste to do something for the society. So some are crafted to send a message across,” she adds.
The excitement was at a fever pitch for the students of Khanak Trivandrum as they prepared for the rang pravesh. “Kathak was one dance that fascinated me while growing up. Learning Kathak was always a dream. The twists and twirls and the fast footwork of Kathak have one in trance. So although I crossed 40, I finally decided to learn it,” says Parvathy Prakash Nair, who played one of the lead roles in the 1990 Malayalam movie ‘Kshanakathu’.
In the list of students is three youngsters trained in Western dance who decided to learn kathak. Kozhikode native Adarsh P Dev shuttles every month to the capital city to learn the dance form.“The style and speed of kathak were one of the attractions. And unlike other classical dance forms, it is mild on expressions and we could readily adapt to it,” he says.