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 e-mail: khokar1960@gmail.com Drishti Festival February 7, 2023 Drishti started off as a palm-sized art mag by Anuradha and Vikranth - a smart, smiling duo of Bangalore - some twenty years ago. Guru Maya Rao, the Kathak legend, sent them my way to get guidance. We had just moved to Bangalore from Delhi in the last century (1998!) and knew only three people in the city: Maya di and family, Protima Bedi and maestro L. Subramaniam. That was almost 25 years ago. I even contributed a dance heritage column in the initial years, featuring such dance greats of Bangalore as Ram Gopal, then Protima and others. Our collaboration continued for long. Drishti Anu (as I started calling her) also took me to meet one sadhu-type chemical engineer entrepreneur called Dr. Raghavendra, who wanted rare photos for a dance calendar then and Anu took me to his studio space to see a library of music collection centre where those days, all cassette tapes were inventoried neatly. He helped save and produce many music CDs then. Later DVDs too. That Dr. Raghavendra today is Ananya who is doing much in Malleswaram for the arts. He has sanitised the sleepy Seva Sadan and made it a happening venue. He also helps artistes medically in times of need and awards many. He is a do-gooder at large, a true Kala upasak. Laxmi he had, now Saraswati's grace is also on him. I call him Swami Raghavendra or Raghavendra Swami! Benign, kind and sabhya. Sahridayi too. Anuradha Vikranth also helped compile list of main city dancers for the Bangalore special issue of attenDance in 2005/6. The Governor T.N. Chaturvedi hosted its launch at Raj Bhavan in 2006. The date was 4/5/6! I still have the car parking sticker of Raj Bhavan, so I remember the unusual date. I had somewhat known the Governor from Delhi days when he was the CAG and his nephew went to college in the same bus I took. Yes, those days VIP kids also travelled by ordinary bus with ordinary people! This preamble may help establish how hard the Vikranth couple have worked to create a dance festival that in 2023 reached its 18th edition. Most people in the field even see success but not the hard work that goes behind. In Sahakar Nagar, they have an active school, with hundreds of students learning in assembly line, well trained and well run. Anuradha herself is an able dancer, who has in last decade come under the tutelage of Dr. Padma Subrahmanyam and this festival was a pre 80th birthday celebrations when her big birthday is on 4th Feb, same as Birju Maharaj ji too.  Priyadarsini Govind and Shobana Even with a very late start of 45 minutes, the festival kept a tight time because all dancers danced at bullet train speed, as star of the evening Shobana joked! She didn't merely dance, she bounced with life. Her dance shows genetic coding, hailing as she does from a major dance family of Travancore sisters (aunts Padmini, Lalitha and Ragini) and her own bindaas star personality on stage; in the end blowing kisses to the staid and stunned Bangalore audiences, she proved why she commands the market as a saleable star of BN. Audiences? House full and 90% paid tickets on bookmyshow. That's a real achievement for Drishti, which also has good fund raising abilities in Vikranth, who works a whole year before festival, raising sponsorship and ad monies, in addition to grants from the culture ministry. Priyadarsini Govind and Shobana teamed up and danced together. Whether it was done by plan or impromptu to save time, since the show had started a full 45 minutes late, is unknown. Imagine those who had come much in advance just to get parking which too the Chowdaiah can streamline by allowing only self driven cars in. Drivers can park out. Why can't the management take simple and practical decisions that help all? Why is Bangalore in sleep mode? In Delhi, many halls do this now, also Mumbai. Even Chennai has started following suit. Wake up, Bangalore! Both danced a Tanjore Quartet varnam Saami ninne in Navaragamalika set to Roopaka tala. By definition when two vastly different artistes come together (in training and technique; style and substance) the polarities are accentuated and comparisons flow in evidence. While Priyadarsini Govind is a Kalanidhi Narayan prototype - with dance being self-conscious, even cautious and literal, Shobana's is the opposite, with ease of delivery, joyous abandon and a devil-may-care attitude. Her jhumka fell and her lipstick shade didn't suit her much but did she care? She just danced on with spirit. In the end, one got the feeling that Shobana danced for herself and Priyadarsini danced for the audience.  Vineeth Radhakrishnan Vineeth Radhakrishnan next showed how a hefty, masculine frame can still be an athletic fish. Madurai Meenakshi for a theme and a royal looking Vineeth showcased his art in a gentle manner within the short time given.  Harihara Smartly all others advertised didn't dance solo because then the audiences would have surely left, if at eight another hour was going to be taken by each. Instead a compact theme based production Harihara penned by local Sanskrit scholar Dr. Ganesh was used in which Mahati Kannan, the Nair sisters Veena and Dhanya, and the two Bhats (Samudyatha and Samanvitha) acquitted themselves with aplomb, chiselling away the Pattadakkal temple tale from the Chalukyan history. Mahati looks like a spring flower with a radiant smile. Most sorted youngster. The Nair sisters are worth their weight in gold and the Bhat sisters looked like a mirror image of each other. Anuradha had started the show with lotus-filled basket offering to Padma Subrahmanyam in the hall and concluded with this production. She was felicitated with fanfare and fulsome accolades by all on stage. Some speakers went on and on, proving mike addiction to be an endemic issue in South India, used as it is to hour-long political speeches. Uday Shankar had said let audiences want more, not less. Our VIPs need a crash course in editing (their own speeches first!)  Anuradha Vikranth and Padma Subrahmanyam Shama, the winsome Kuchipudi dancer, compered well and lights were excellent as also the sets. The homage film on Dr. Padma Subrahmanyam was charming and fetching, full of rare snippets and dances. It was a befitting Samarpan function in honour of Dr. Padma Subrahmanyam and hope no one puts drishti on Drishti! Bangalore enjoyed the star packed evening; there were more in hall than on stage. The who's who of the dance world were there in attendance.  Khokar is a critic and author by profession; historian by education; arts administrator by occupation; archivist by disposition; film compiler through documentation and celebrator of arts and artistes by tradition. More details on attendance-india.com Post your comments Please provide your name and email id when you use the Anonymous/blog profile to post a comment. All appropriate comments posted with name and email id in the blog will also be featured in the site. |
