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In a conventional performance, the dancer would probably explain the meaning of the song before she began to dance, taking care to use euphemisms where the text became too explicit. Recorded in Brindha Manickavasakan’s rich, strong voice, this was a heavily erotic song of a woman/devotee separated from her lover/God asking him to assuage her burning body. We as audience, had to be prepared to abandon our comfort zone as they had abandoned theirs.Ĭhettur’s aesthetic of economy and slowness coupled with neutrality of expression, threw into ironic relief the words of Mohamana, the Varnam she had chosen to choreograph. They were entirely with themselves and their bodies. We are used to dancers and musicians making some concessions towards entertaining us. In its place she gave us non-narrational gestures shorn of emotion and a deconstruction of pure dance elements where every muscle was controlled to move just this much and no more. While adhering to this structure, Chettur rejected Bharatanatyam’s emotional narration and the grace, symmetry and speed of its pure dance. The varnam falls into two parts - the narrative, which expresses the emotions of the chosen song, and the abstract, danced to the accompaniment of percussive syllables.
#VARNAM BHARATANATYAM DANCE VIDEO SERIES#
This is what we experienced on Saturday at the Max Mueller Bhavan, watching Varnam, coproduced by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, and India Foundation for the Arts.įrom this hypnotic beginning, Chettur’s choreography continued its dialogue with the conventional varnam through a series of references and rejections. What he didn’t see was its movement from moment to moment. What he saw was the flower in various stages of opening and closing.
![varnam bharatanatyam dance video varnam bharatanatyam dance video](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/YDk5fd9M0KI/hqdefault.jpg)
Since the petals must move to open and close, Barve thought he could catch the movement if he sat up all night concentrating on a single flower. The gulbakshi flower blooms after dark and begins to close with the first light. It reminded me of the late artist Prabhakar Barve’s nocturnal experiment. It is like a gentle wave of movement which you are aware of but don’t see, your body tense with the effort of trying to catch it all in one glance. Then, even as the last dancer arrives at this point, the first has begun to reverse the process towards her original position. So you see different movements in different stages of unfolding as the dancers progress towards their respective culminations. Your attention shifts from one to the other because your eye-span can’t take them all in. Meanwhile, one by one, the dancers have begun to move, using mudras from the Bharatanatyam repertoire. Then other mechanical sounds, creaking, grating, ticking, get layered on it.
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Soon a faint sound like a radio signal makes itself heard, gradually building up to clear audibility. Something is about to happen though we don’t know what.
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The dancers on their chairs are a distant echo of the aramandi, the basic posture in Bharatanatyam. Already we see a conversation beginning between the conventional varnam, the centrepiece of a Bharatanatyam recital, and Chettur’s choreography. We are about to watch Varnam, choreographed by contemporary dancer Padmini Chettur, trained in Bharatanatyam and once a member of the awe-inspiring Chandralekha’s troupe. Six women sit in a row on evenly spaced out chairs, their legs a little apart, hands on laps, faces neutral.