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 Dancers excel in Parampara Festival - Vijay Shanker e-mail: vijaydance@gmail.com November 12, 2021 On behalf of Kuchipudi Parampara Foundation Trust, Bangalore based Kuchipudi exponent and mentor Deepa Narayanan Sashindran, presented a two day Kuchipudi festival virtually on their YouTube channel on 30th and 31st October. Some of the dancers performed extremely well and it was a pleasure to watch them dancing with professional expertise and confidence.  Guru Mahankali Suryanarayana Sarma  Badari Divya Bhushan  Deepika Reddy For the second time, the Foundation has presented the festival virtually due to the pandemic. This festival was dedicated to Sridevi Narayanan Nair, chief patron and life trustee of Kuchipudi Parampara Foundation and mother of Deepa Narayanan Sashindran, and to other artists who left for their heavenly abode. While Akshata Sukumar, disciple of Deepa, introduced the dancers, the chief guest on the occasion was renowned Kuchipudi exponent Deepika Reddy, founder of Deepanjali School of Kuchipudi, Hyderabad. Guests honoured included Guru Mahankali Suryanarayana Sarma, founder of Thirumal Art Academy in Guntur and Bharatanatyam exponent Badari Divya Bhushan, director of Bhushan's Academy of Performing Arts and Visual Presentation, Mysore. The festival was supported by the Kannada and Culture department of the Government of Karnataka. Following the typical Kuchipudi 'bani' initiated by Guru Vempati Chinna Satyam, Deepa Sashindran has been a devoted exponent for over four decades and has sought guidance from one of the foremost disciples of the maestro, Manju Bhargavee. For more than a decade, Deepa has trained several students and presented various dance dramas as well. Deepa has danced in some of the most prestigious festivals both in India and abroad. This festival projected the complexity and the beauty of the Kuchipudi dance as taught at the Kuchipudi Art Academy in Chennai for decades. The first dancer of the festival Sonu Satheeshkumar, commenced her performance with "Kanakasabha," an ode to Lord Chidambaram, an extract taken from Kuchipudi Parampara Foundation's dance drama Nandanar Charitram choreographed in 2017 by Deepa Sashindran with music by Shweta Prasad, lyrics in Telugu by Venkat Gadepalli. The glory of the lord and the cosmic dance was well executed with striking and powerful movements by the talented Sonu who is also a known actress. Sonu concluded with Jayadeva's "Kisalaya" set in ragamalika and adi tala, exposing the relation of Radha and Kirshna.  Sonu Satheeshkumar  Kasi Aysola The first male dancer of the festival Kasi Aysola from USA danced with professional ease and expertise, revealing his devotion and commitment to Kuchipudi. Jayappa Nayak's composition Manduka Sabdam revealing the story of how the woman becomes a frog and how she comes back to her original form was well enacted. In Narayana Teertha's Krishna Leela Tarangini it was thrilling to watch Kasi dancing on the brass plate, beginning with feet kept criss-cross and then proceeding on to the normal pattern of rhythmic movements. I must admit that he is among one of the best male Kuchipudi dancers that I have seen. Kasi has been trained by Vempati Ravi Shankar and Yamini Saripallli and is the director of Prakriti Dance. Hailing from Taiwan, Kaichi Lo got fascinated by Kuchipudi dance after watching a movie. This motivated her to learn and master the art form by following the guru-sishya parampara; she is the disciple of Sailaja and has formed her own dance group in Taiwan known as In-Sha (Exotic dance group). Performing the traditional Siddhendra Yogi composition "Bhamane Satybhamane", she scored well in the pure dance movements but one can definitely expect better expressions pertaining to the royal and proud Satyabhama. Swati Thirunal's composition "Shankara sri giri natha prabho" was well performed with precise and striking movements.  Kaichi Lo  Somanath & Ghousepeer One of the most exciting performances of the festival was the duet by Kallubandi Somanath Bharadwaj and Gajala Deethamvali Ghousepeer, the disciples of Patnam Shivaprasad from Ananthapur (AP). The symmetry, uniformity and the precise execution of varied movements created a lasting spell on the audience. Although they belong to different backgrounds, they performed the Durga number and the Thillana with fine synchronization. Incidentally Ghousepeer is among the few male dancers from the Muslim community. The second day commenced with the fine dancer from Kerala, Reshma U Raj. Reshma has been trained by Vempati Ravi Shankar and Bala Kondala Rao, and thereby has imbibed the beauty and complexity of the technique quite well. She interpreted the story of Usha, daughter of Banasura, with subtlety. She received fine musical support from the well knit orchestra.  Reshma U Raj  Priyanka Pahari Priyanka Pahari from Toronto, Canada, is the disciple of Srimayi Venkat. She performed the ashtapadi "Sanchara dadara" and the Oothukkadu Venkata Subbaiyer's composition "Marakatha manimaya" with natural expressions and charm relating to the subtle relation of the Lord with the heroine. It was interesting to watch the mother-daughter duo from Washington DC, Lakshmi Babu Bangaru and Sneha Babu, who performed "Krishna Madhuram" describing the beauty of the Lord and various episodes in the life of Krishna like Kaliya Mardana, childhood pranks etc. Their performance was marked more for expressions and not many movements.  Lakshmi Babu Bangaru and Sneha Babu  Dr. Aparna Nangiar The last performer for the festival, Dr. Aparna Nangiar belongs to the traditional family of Koodiyattam artists. Her grand uncle Ammanur Madhava Chakyar was one of the pioneer exponents of Koodiyattam. Aparna is a Sanskrit scholar and interpreted one of the avatars of Lord Vishnu - Koormaavatar - with fine netra and mukhaja abhinaya. On the whole, it was a fine festival with wonderful performers.  Vijay Shankar is a Kuchipudi and Kathakali exponent, teacher, bilingual journalist, arts critic and actor. |
