RASA: An exploration of classical Indian dance

GEETHA PATIL

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts: The José Mateo Ballet Theatre’s Dance for World Community presented a breathtaking dance program as its first episode on the stage for a new dance series known as Dance Saturdays at SanctuaryTheatre, Cambridge, Massachusetts March 16 showcasing local, culturally diverse dance groups along with music, visual arts, and food for an immersive dance celebration.

The event attracted hundreds of people from across the area for the program “RASA: An exploration of Classical Indian Dance” to learn more about the Indian classical dances and music.

Performances by local Indian artists including the Vidyanjali Dancers of New England, the Hindu Temple Rhythms, the Upasana Odissi, Shekhar Shastri of Meru Foundation, poet and lyricist Sunayana Kachroo, and artists of Kalakruti among others were put together with the title RASA.

RASA, in the Sanskrit text, denotes the essential quality in dance and other arts that transports audiences to another reality full of wonder to inspire a heightened consciousness. This RASA team presented the delight and the mystery of two of India’s ancient classical dance forms: Bharat Natyam and Odissi. Both are influenced and enhanced by the history, literature, music and visual art of multicultural India.

The Dance Saturdays’ RASA program started with the welcome note by José Mateo, Founder and Director of José Mateo Ballet Theatre and presided over by world-renowned dance guru ‘Natya Veda Bharati’ Sudha Chandra Sekhar. She was also the guest of honor. Sekhar (Nattuvangam), Aditya Venkatesh (vocals), Varun Chandramouli (mridangam), and Kiran Manda (violin) presented a very melodious invocation song followed by a Ganapati song by Anandini Chandra Sekhar.

The next dance item was the Alarippu, a traditional invocation dance in the Bharata Natyam repertoire. Alarippu means ‘blossoming’ and in this dance the dancers’ limbs unfolded like the petals of a blooming flower. For this dance, Anandini Chandra Sekhar sang a song in “Ragam: Nattai, Thalam: Thisram”. Shekhar Shastri, the master of ceremony, introduced Amrutha Ananth who presented “Padam: Ananda Nadamidum Padam” dance with a song sung by her husband, Aditya Venkateshin.

Divya Narayan and Chitra Narayan displayed their dance “Padam: Devi Neeye Thunai” for the lyrical poem by the Tamil poet Papanasam Sivan, which extols the warrior-goddess Meenakshi, which was sung by. Kavitha Venkatesan in “Ragam: Keervani, Thalam: Adi”.

In the poetry and literature Segment, Shastri described how the poetry and literature of India have influenced dance. Sunayana Kachroo read her Hindi poem titled “Panni (Water)” and Sam Bhambhani played the guitar. Dancers Anandini Chandra Sekhar and Mouli Pal danced and demonstrated every word of the poem through their dance postures. Kachroo also performed a rap song that involved both dancing and clapping by the audiences.

Shekhar Shastri gave a brief introduction to Odissi dance and Mouli Pal presented two elegant solo Odissi dances “Pallavi (Raag: Miya Mallhar Taal: Ektaali)” and “Abhinaya – Maare Baano”. Abhinaya is a mime where the dancer vividly depicts a song or poem and expresses its mood and meaning using an intricate language composed of facial expressions, hand gestures and body movements. She used recorded music with music composition by Debasish Sarkar and rhythm composition by Uttam Mondol.

This was followed by the introduction of Sudha Chandra Sekhar and her Abhinaya. Sudha and her team presented the live teaching of Abhinaya through the demonstration of “Krishna Nee Begane Baroo” song sung by Kavitha Venkatesan in “Ragam: Yamuna Kalyani, Thalam: Misra Chapu”.

Then came the interactive segment on music and rhythm by Rohith Jayaraman of Berklee Indian Ensemble fame. He talked about the Kunnakol (the art of performing percussion syllables vocally in South Indian Carnatic music), Jathi (specifying beat count of the rhythm cycle), Sollakattu (a combination of konnakol syllables spoken while simultaneously counting the tala that is clapping with the hand) and rhythms in Indian classical music for dance. He said that Hindustani and Carnatic music have the same names of the ragas but the way they are performed is different. Audiences also enjoyed learning some talas from Rohit.

The final dance item presented a beautiful composition of Pandit Ravi Shankar known as Tarana, a Hindustani classical piece that used syllables that emulate the sitar and tabla. This piece was created by Mouli and Anandini.

Shastri thanked José Mateo for including and supporting the local classical Indian dance groups in their Dance Saturdays series. He thanked all the performers for their wonderful performances, local artists for displaying their art work in the hallway with help of Catherine Amidon, the exhibition curator and sound engineer Javed.