Foreign exchange of music, dance and art

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Tanya Saxena

The NRI Music and Dance festival, the two-day festival that began on January 9, is a treat for music and dance lovers. Inviting Indian and overseas classical dancers and giving them a same stage to perform, the festival tries to establish the link between different dancers and a bond between them. Starting from Bharatanatyam to Odissi to Kathak, this dance and music festival has everything for everyone.

Organised by Swaranjali and Odissi Academy, the festival has invited dancers like Tanya Saxena, disciple of Padmashri Guru Saroja Vaidyanathan, Prachi Dixit and her disciple Khalil Alashar from the US, Mansi Verma, disciple of Padmabhushan Smt. Yamini Krishnamurthy etc. “Swaranjali is willing to establish and promote the rich Indian classical art forms with its tradition and standardisation. It encourages NRI dancers and young upcoming budding artistes of India, who are not so well known and deserve to get a stage and carry forward their art forms in their life,” says Subrata De, founder of Swaranjali and one of the performers in the festival.

“Our motto is to inspire NRI dancers to perform in India so that we exchange the cultural thoughts and richness of the West. And we are very proud to say that in abroad these dancers are promoting our culture,” adds Mr De. Looking at the influence Indian classical has on the Western countries, Mr De and Swaranjali looked for some innovative ways to make this two ends meet. “Classical dance forms like Bharata-natyam, Odissi, Kathak has spread the aroma of our culture, history throughout the world and made us proud as an Indian with their abhinay, attractive background music with layakaris and eye-catching costumes,” says Mr De.

He adds that we need to establish more and more centres of classical dance and music so that the young generation can cultivate the art in a better way. “Nowadays kala or art has become glamorous. Everyone wants to be a dancer within one month of practice or so. However, classical dance requires years and years of sadhana and devotion to be established and to perform on stage. We need to establish more centres for classical music to develop and cultivate our culture better way in every part of India. In abroad the devotion, dedication and determination for the Indian classical music and dance is huge. We need the same kind of attitude in India too,” says Mr De.

This year Swaranjali will invite some Finnish jazz artistes and Korean drummers to join its classical music concert in December 2013.

The first day of the festival saw Bharatanatyam by Tanya Saxena, Kathak duet by Prachi Dixit along with her disciple Khalil Alashar from the US, followed by Bharatanatyam by Mansi Verma.

Prachi Dixit, the founder of Nupur Dance Academy conducting classes in Torrance and in the greater Los Angeles area, says, “I have been staying in the US since the last 29 years. And I am amazed by the way the West has responded to classical dance. I think they have taken classical dance in a far better way than Indians.”

Though she has been staying in the US, Ms Dixit still value traditional form of dance and doesn’t like tangling with the purity of classical dance. “If you can keep the purity of any dance form intact and mix other forms with it, it’s fine. But you can’t tangle with the purity of classical dance. I remember what Birju Maharaj had to say when he was asked about the point of dancing with a diya in the hand and matki on the head in this modern age. He said when electricity is gone, this diya comes handy. And classical dance is something like this. Every other dance form may get faded with years, but classical dance will be there for ever.”

Tanya, who started her Bharatanatyam training at the tender age of 13, believes that dance is the food for her soul, which keeps her disciplined and grounded. “I was always interested in dance. I’d been going to concerts and dabbling in various forms from a young age. What I liked about Bharatanatyam is its precision and its focus on geometry and line. The Tanjavur style, which is the style of Bharatanatyan I practice, is especially athletic and precise. It combines graceful and soft movements and abhinaya with pure dance and this gives the dancer a wide range to experiment,” says Tanya.

She says people often underestimate the effort each classical dancer gives before performing on stage. It is very demanding on the body. “As a dancer, you conceal the effort behind the movement, and so the physicality tends to escapes the audience. It is extremely demanding on the body. Unlike certain other professions, you can’t switch on and off — one doesn’t stop being a dancer once you get off the stage. You have to take constant care of yourself. You have to keep reading and thinking of new choreography, and creatively, sometimes, this can become a strain,” says Tanya.

Urging that though classical dance is often very difficult for a layman to understand, Tanya says it is slowly evolving and rectifying that disconnect. “With an increasingly diverse audience, I see the dance opening up to more languages. I see classical dance evolving to rectify the disconnect between the dance and the audience. A popular trend to this effect is the emergence of dance dramas and large group productions. Classical dance is likely to see more and more of these large productions in the future,” adds Tanya.

The highlights of today’s performances are sitar recital by Subrata De, disciple of Pandit Manilal Nag, accompaniment by Tansen Shrivastava, followed by an Odissi dance by Kavita Dwibedi, disciple of Shri Hare Krishna Behera.