In September last year, when legendary Kathak dancer-choreographer Dr Maya Rao passed away, Madhu Nataraj Kiran, her daughter, confesses, she lost three people at the same time—“mother, guru and soul buddy. She was like my consultant, confidante, my anchor”. Madhu and her ensemble STEM Dance Kampni (STEM is short for space, time, energy and movement), her institution and creative studio, where she seamlessly juggles many roles, presented Maya-Links and Echoes at the Kathak Mahothsav recently. She adds, “Her body was a storehouse of her experiences, and with her going away there is a void that is irreplaceable.”
In the tautly-designed 45-minute performance, Madhu and her team of dancers travelled back in time, and traced legendary dancer Rao’s choreography from the 1950s until her passing away last year.
For audiences, this experience peppered interestingly with technology and multimedia allowed them an entry point into this iconic dancer’s body of work not merely chronologically and historically speaking but also from the perspective of her evolution of ideas and thoughts. In re-visiting Dr Rao’s journey—from a young practitioner of the art form who took it to her hometown Bengaluru and went on to make it her own, and bloomed into a dancer, choreographer and collaborator worth reckoning—Madhu and her ensemble celebrated the indomitable spirit and vision of a woman who balanced old-world Kathak but whose ideas and imagination ran parallel to the world that was in the now.
Madhu is a fighter; “and that is how Ma would have liked me to be,” she says, over a telephonic conversation from her home in Bengaluru. “My mother was around the same age when she lost her guru, Shambhu Maharajji. How did she deal with the loss? How did she cope and continue? I think of that and move along.”
A dancer, choreographer, educator, arts’ administrator, presenter and collaborator, Madhu is honest in admitting that multi-tasking is very challenging. “It’s definitely a balancing act,” she says, “but as performers, we are always doing that, right?”
She is a professional when it comes to balancing acts. In the world of Kathak in India, she brings to the stage a slice of the contemporary. Interpreting poetry and ideas, and drawing inspiration and influences from her grounding in Kathak and her training in contemporary dance, to create a fresh vocabulary of a very pure dance form, Madhu was groomed into the art form by her mother and aunt Suchitra Venugopal. “In Ma,” Madhu says, “I found a teacher who was an artist, who allowed you to think, create, innovate; from my aunt, I learnt the importance of structure and rigour in training. Both are equally important for a dancer.”
As a teacher of dance, allowing novices and experts engage with the art form, Madhu follows the same principle. “Riyaaz is imperative but to grow as an artiste, you need to make the art your own.” In the Natya STEM Dance Kampni, dancers are trained in Kathak and are also introduced and initiated in Indian martial art forms, Hatha Yoga and the STEM technique. “In whatever we do, we believe in being relevant,” Madhu says, “And that is how my mother was as well. And Maya-Links and Echoes were an attempt to showcase the archival, timeless and most importantly, the contemporary quality of her body of work.”