Every year Natyarangam, the dance wing of Narada Gana Sabha, brings together artistes and scholars for its annual thematic festival. Dancers, both young and established, look forward to perform at this festival, which gives them an opportunity to look beyond the traditional repertoire to create a full-length work. For the past 26 editions, the festival has been coming up with different themes. This year’s, titled ‘Rithu Bharatham’, was based on the six seasons. Dancers along with musicians and resource persons explored the myriad facets of each rithu (season).
But the guidelines to necessarily include works of Kalidasa, Sangam literature, Ragamala paintings and festivals seemed to be constricting, with the dancers not being able to visualise the theme in their own distinct way. A fixed template resulted in a familiar pattern on all six days.
Rama Vaidyanathan segmented the season into five parts beginning with Saumya and ending with Apeksha. | Photo Credit: SRINATH M
Rama Vaidyanathan’s Vasantha Rithu
The festival began with senior Bharatanatyam dancer Rama Vaidyanathan heralding the Spring (Vasantha Rithu). Rama presented the season in five parts — Saumya (season of equanimity), Punaravarthana (rejuvenation), Kama roopini (love), Bahu Varnani (multi-hued), and Apeksha (hope).
Rama Vaidyanathan created a visual imagery of spring. | Photo Credit: SRINATH M
Backed by a well-composed soundscape, she described days and nights of the season through interesting ideas — scattering of seeds to the rhythm of tanam and using swara passages for different flowers. The highlight was her detailed exploration of the lotus flower, on which stands goddess Saraswathi. For this imagery, she used the song ‘Saraswathi namosthuthe’, composed by G.N. Balaubramaniam in raga Saraswathi.
The section showing Manmatha gliding on his vahana Parrot was gracefully presented. However, the descriptions of the cool breeze, swaying palms, birds, bees, peacocks and deer were a little overstretched. Spring is marked by the most colourful festival Holi and Raslila dance. Rama presented them from the point of view of a modern bride and her concern for the environment.
The music was conceived by S. Vasudevan, who used instruments such as ghatam, kanjira, sitar and suitable ragas for different sequences.
Apoorva Jayaraman’s Grishma Rithu
Apoorva Jayaraman and the saga of summer | Photo Credit: SRINATH M
It was time to move on to the next season — Summer, as Apoorva Jayaraman presented ‘Grishma Rithu‘. Wearing a waistcoat on top of the Bharatanatyam costume, Apoorva appeared as Manmatha and performed verses from Kalidasa’s Ritu Samharam to depict Kamadeva. Unlike the romantic portrayal in spring, the imageries here included Manmatha’s drooping sugarcane bow, wilting flowers of his arrow, and a tired parrot, conveying the exhaustion caused by heat.
Apoorva Jayaraman portrayed the water crisis during summer. | Photo Credit: SRINATH M
Water scarcity, a common problem faced during summer, was conveyed through a beautiful abhinaya sequence. The piece showed a mother’s love as she quenches her child’s thirst with the little amount of water that she has, before she embarks on a long journey to procure water.
Apoorva Jayaraman used jathis to denote the blazing sun | Photo Credit: SRINATH M
Rhythmic jathis to denote the blazing sun, and swaras to depict the peacock were interesting, but repetitive musical phrases throughout the performance appeared tedious.
Vaibhav Arekar’s Varsha
Vaibhav Arekar’s dramatic portrayal of the monsoon. | Photo Credit: SRINATH M
Vaibhav Arekar’s ‘Varsha — Harvest of Lost Dreams’, took the series into a dance-theatre mode. The artistes of the well-put-together musical ensemble were dressed in black to go with the mood of the season.
The premise of Vaibhav’s performance was based on a farmer’s emotional connect with Nature. He began by showing a farmer ploughing, tilling and sowing seeds, and waiting for the rains for a good harvest. However, when the monsoon doesn’t arrive on time, he is shattered. The piece concluded with the farmer surrendering to Nature’s vagaries.
Vaibhav Arekar conveyed the emotional relationship between man and Nature. | Photo Credit: SRINATH M
The scene that stood out was where Vaibhav lay under the spotlight, slowly and gracefully raising up his hands as if holding his beloved in a tight embrace. It showed the strong bond between man and Nature.
Jathi korvais and adavus were used beautifully to convey the energy of the sun and force of the water. Dikshitar’s composition ‘Anandamrithakarshini’, a Sangam poetry, and works of Kalidasa and Bharati were woven seamlessly to convey the idea.
Monsoon evokes a feeling of anticipation, joy and excitement. However, in this performance the mood was largely of angst, anguish, and fury.
Visual images
It was a great idea to use Ragamala paintings, a unique form of Indian miniature painting, as a source material. But the paintings could have been projected more meaningfully, and for the entire duration of the pieces based on them. This could have helped the audience to draw a connect between these paintings based on ragas and the season associated with them and the dance. It would have then served better the purpose of drawing a parallel between the two art forms.
