"A forum to further talent" - An article in "The Hindu"

A forum to further talent

By CHARUKESI

Young Bharatanatyam dancers from different schools have formed ‘Prayathnam’ a unique endeavour for the promotion of classical dance.

Photo: N. Sridharan

One banner: Prayathnam Dance Teachers Group.

A couple of decades ago, it was well nigh impossible to form a group of young Bharatanatyam dancers belonging to different schools. Communication between students of one school and another was almost taboo. When Fine Arts Foundation - India entered the scene two decades ago, with programmes featuring students of different gurus, there was a glimmer of hope that like YACM, these young girls would form a group for their own benefit. With a handful of young promising dancers organising themselves under a common banner, ‘Lakshya’ was born. It did not, however, take strong roots. Now a group has given a concrete shape to the idea. The result is ‘Prayathnam.’

Founded in August 2008 with a dozen members, its strength is now 40.
“We are a small group started by Divyasena, Sasirekha Rammohan and me,” says Sreelatha Vinod, a prime disciple of the Dhananjayans and a brilliant dancer in her own right. “Our idea is to continue the process of learning in specific areas from experts and professionals, while continuing our performances alongside. We launched ‘Prayathnam,’ in August last with a lecture series. Gurus like M.V. Narasimhachari, Chitra Visveswaran, Sudharani Raghupathi and V.P. Dhananjayan were the motivating force and it is their inspiration that has strengthened our forum.”

Lectures and classes

With lectures on ‘Chitrilakkiyam’ by Prof. Raghuraman, lec-dems by Nandini Ramani on the Thanjavur style of Bharatanatyam, karanas workshop by Piyal Bhattacharya in two batches, Vilasini Natyam by Swapna Sundari, and lec-dem by Bharat Gupt this March. Although Kalanidhi Narayanan did not believe in lectures, she came forward to conduct special padam classes and they are on-going sessions at her residence on Wednesday mornings, while V.A.K Ranga Rao’s classes are on Tuesday mornings.

“We hold our classes in different venues depending upon the teachers,” says Sasirekha. “Yes, we meet once a month and also as often as necessary. The initial meeting was with guru M.V. Narasimhachari. He advised us to have a common syllabus. While Chitra Visveswaran offered space in her school for lectures/chamber concerts, Sudharani Raghupathy urged us to collect some rare songs with their meanings and offered to co-operate to interpret them with other teachers’ inputs. Prof. Raghuraman welcomed the idea of constantly updating knowledge of Bharatanatyam and its allied disciplines of music and literature.”

“Udipi Lakshminarayana is also a Sanskrit scholar, besides being a Bharatanatyam guru and he has a lot of information on theory and practice which he readily offered to share with us. Krishnakumari Narendran gave valuable information on presentation aspects and stressed the reasons to harness technology in a production for a better audience appeal. Leela Shekar gave inputs on how to conduct a festival and urged us to pay as much importance to music as in teaching dance,” explains Sasirekha.

Nirmala Ramachandran was another senior guru who offered to conduct padam classes in Pandanallur bani. Sujatha Vijayaraghavan came forward to share her collection of songs to help them enrich their repertoire. Savithri Jagannatha Rao was keen to help and even agreed to conduct orientation programmes for the first and second year syllabi, while Dhananjayan offered his services to draft them. Adyar Lakshman was prepared to conduct Nattuvangam classes; so was Bhagavathulu Seetharama Sharma. . Prof. C.V. Chandrasekhar advised us to upgrade ourselves in theory and practice and came forward to teach abhinaya darpana at his premises. Kalakshetra has been very helpful too. While Leela Samson joined hands in organising a workshop with Swapna Sundari, senior guru Balagopal agreed to conduct classes on Netra Abhinaya. Janardhan will teach ashtapatis.

“So, it has been a very good augury. ,” says Sreelatha Vinod. “This way, we are achieving our objectives of broadening the scope of learning,” she smiles. “ We are in the process of making a data base for existing lyrics and their meanings. We also plan to institute a diploma course with specific syllabus and assessment with graded certification. We want to go to local schools and rural areas to conduct classes and quiz competitions and present lec-dems. Needless to say we intend making provisions to facilitate compilation of theory notes to be used for advanced students. We aspire to conduct dance festivals in temples and later other venues so as to give different schools an opportunity to perform,” concludes Sasirekha.

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