When did you decide to move away from traditional Bharatanatyam and experiment with movement patterns and music?
It was my late beloved Guru, K N Dakshinamurthi who urged me to experiment with adavus and jatis. This was in the early nineteen nineties. He insisted that the impulse that his late elder brother K N Dandayudhapani Pillai had in creating freshness to dance should be continued. So it was under his hawk eye that we started working different body patterns based on the broad framework of similar aesthetics. I remember him showing me off to Guru Mahalingam Pillai in Mumbai. Both of them chuckled at the immense possibilities and variations possible. Both traditionalists, they understood that the dance could evolve and yet engage. That generation was above narrow categorizations of dance and truly grasped what was beautiful and shaswath in dance. But they also realized that the dance had to evolve, grow and flourish. It is under their blessings that new directions in my dance blossomed. Do you think contemporary movement vocabulary/composition is more challenging than the classical Bharatanat
Related Questions
- What is the difference between TRADITIONAL and CONTEMPORARY responses? How do I decide which is best for our organization?
- Patterns of thought (Will I become a creative and critical thinker who can make connections across traditional boundaries?)
- How do you decide which schools or districts in a city will be selected for the VH1 Save The Music program?
