An absorbing Mohiniattam performance by Swapna Rajendrakumar

- SK Venugopal
e-mail: venu.sreesankara@gmail.com
Photos: Haree Fotografie

January 9, 2026

Swapna Rajendrakumar is a renowned Mohiniattam performer presently based out of Bangalore. Born and brought up in Mumbai, she had started learning Bharatanatyam from the age of 5 and Mohiniattam from college days. She continued learning and practicing Mohiniattam under the training of her Guru Dr. Sunanda Nair for almost 25 years. Later she pursued higher learning in Mohiniattam in Kalamandalam style, under the caring guidance of Kalamandalam Kshemavathi teacher for nearly a decade. Similarly, she started pursuing her Bharatanatyam under Kiran Subramaniam and Sandhya Kiran. She completed her masters in performing arts with specialization in Mohiniattam from Reva University, Bangalore. As an artiste of Mohiniattam, she has won several awards and accolades and has performed at various dance festivals all over India. She was conferred with Junior Fellowship from ministry of culture in 2016-17. She conducts classes in Mohiniattam and Bharatanatyam at the 'Nrithyangana' Institute of Performing Arts, which not only imparts training in both dance styles, but also conducts festivals of classical dance in all forms, celebrating the variety and vastness of our rich culture and traditions. She is a graded Doordarshan artiste.

I had an opportunity to watch her perform at the Soorya Festival at Thiruvananthapuram on 31st December 2025. The longest ever festival conducted in the country with 118 days of celebration of arts and culture of our great nation, the legendary Surya Krishnamurthy showcases best of talents drawn from all over the country. It is a dream come true for any artiste to perform at this festival. I was told Swapna had an attack of jaundice just a month ago. I understand that her overwhelming desire to perform at Surya and her unflinching commitment to the dance form topped up with extreme confidence level, made her perform flawlessly with likes of Regatta Girija teacher and Methil Devika watching throughout the entire length of the program. Her single-minded devotion/submission to the dance form, I believe would surely fetch her a lot of opportunities and accolades in times to come.

Swapna Rajendrakumar started her performance by paying obeisance to 'Vignaharta' Ganapathi, with an item 'Ekadantam' a composition of Late M.K. Vasudevan in ragamalika and adi talam. A great start indeed to a very absorbing 75 minutes of classic Mohiniattam. All the items presented were choreographies of Swapna's Guru Kalamandalam Kshemavathi. After the Ganesh Vandana, she went on to the central piece, the Varnam in raga Saramathi narrating the story of Manjula, a staunch devotee of Lord Guruvayurappan, and the glory of 'Manjulal' (banian tree) standing tall in front of the East side of the temple of Guruvayur. The lyrics of this Varnam were written by Thrissur Mohan Kumar and music by Vayala Rajendran. Manjula, the ardent devotee of Kishna, known for her innocent devotion, makes a garland as usual for her beloved Krishna with so much of love and devotion and rushes to the temple to offer the same and pray, but finds the doors of the temple closed as she was late by a few seconds. With so much of disappointment, she walks back weeping all the way and happens to meet the saintly Villwamangalam Swamy, who tells her not to worry and advises her to put the garland on the banyan tree in front of the temple. He goes on to say that the garland would be accepted by the Lord, since it was made with so much devotion and love.

Manjula did the same with her pure heart. The next day when the priest enters the shrine to conduct morning rituals, he finds this beautiful garland on the deity along with other garlands. As he tries to remove the garlands placed the previous day, for conducting usual rituals, he was astonished to see this particular garland re-appearing again and again on the idol as if not ready to part with it. He comes out to inform about this phenomenon to the devotees. Villwamangalam Swamiyar who was there at that time realizes that the garland is the one made by Manjula, asks the devotees to summon Manjula immediately. Manjula was overwhelmed with joy to find that her Lord has accepted her garland and she yearns for salvation. The banyan tree thus came to be known as 'Manjulal'. Swapna did full justice to the depiction of this story with brilliant expressions and graceful moves. The highlights were the 'bhakti bhava' of Manjula in disappointment of seeing the closed door of the temple and the astonishment of the priest at seeing the miracle happening in front of him. The selection of raga for this varnam was so apt for conveying the feel of the story and the musicians really did a marvelous job in producing such a masterpiece varnam.

Swapna Rajendrakumar

The next and the concluding item was a Thillana based on a composition by Maharaja Swathi Thirunal, in raga Bhoopalam again choreographed by her Guru Kalamandalam Kshemavathi. The classic Mohiniattam moves always so good to watch, were brilliantly in display through out the performance and the artiste deserves kudos for this.

The performance was staged at 'Ganesham', the most happening place of theatrical presentations. The ambience was just amazing with top class light and sound management. The auditorium is designed in such a way that the performer gets a feel of the audience, bringing out the best in them. Even while appreciating the glorious standards set by Soorya in terms of time discipline, I felt it was harsh on the part of organizers to have allotted a slot as late as 8.30pm for the artiste. The entire live orchestra team as also Kalamandalam Kshemavathi had to wait for a group performance with recorded music to get over. In fact, it should have been in reverse order. Barring this anomaly everything else about the day's program was well organized in keeping with the traditions set by Surya.

The live orchestra that accompanied Swapna was just fabulous and did compliment the quality of performance of the artiste in a big way. It included Kalamandalam Kshemavathi - nattuvangam, Bijeesh Krishna - vocal, Kalamandalam Kiran Gopinath - mridangam, Murali Krishna - veena, Murali Narayanan - flute, and Thrissur Ajithkumar - edakka.

S.K. Venugopal is a businessman in the field of Engineering projects, also a singer, composer, accredited artiste in Light Music at All India Radio, auditioned and graded member of panel of speakers in Films Division of India, who was once associated with Mohiniattam as accompanying musician and music composer.