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Bangalore artistes come together for Kalarnava 2011 - Nrithya Pillai e-mail: nrithyapillai@gmail.com June 9, 2011 The Bharatanatyam artistes of Bangalore showed true spirit and togetherness by organising a full fledged margam for the Gokulam School of Music's Kalarnava Festival 2011, which took place at the JSS Auditorium in Bangalore. It could have been the first time wherein a good number of the artistes of the city took the stage together and presented a complete concert with a live orchestra consisting of all the vocalists and dance musicians. A brainwave of veteran flautist HS Venugopal and coordinated by Guru B Bhanumathi, the concert saw 46 dancers and 15 orchestra members coming together on stage. The music ensemble was led by musician DS Srivatsa. Students from different schools, different styles, seniors and juniors, all performed a well coordinated margam which went on nonstop, the introduction to every item being made in music form. Senior dancers like Praveen Kumar, Soundarya Srivatsa, Sheila Chandrashekhar, Sathyanarayna Raju, Seshadri Iyengar, Rama Venugopalan along with their students and students from other schools were part of this program. The highlight of the margam was Lalgudi G Jayaraman's Charukesi Varnam that was performed by several groups of Bangalore's senior dancers. What was astonishing is that there was perfect coordination and no qualms about variation in style or perceptions. All the participants including the musicians were felicitated by art critic Dr. M Surya Prasad and dancer Viji Prakash.

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