Fine footwork on stage

Dance recital

This was organised by Rhythmotion Dance Academy along with other artistes from the City.

The guests of honour were Maya Rao from the Natya Institute of Kathak and R V Raghavendra, founder of Ananya, another society for arts and music.

Says Chitra Arvind, the Artistic Director, “What was unique about this evening was that all of us who performed are alumni of Natya Institute of Kathak, where we all were tutored under the guidance of Maya Rao. Each of us has our own dance institution. So it was really heartening when all of us came together and performed on a single platform.” 

The recital was like any other traditional kathak dance performance.  This whole rep­ertoire were traditional kathak pieces with tumri, bhajan and others. But a new set of music was composed exclusively for this evening by Sh­ankar Shanbhog.

The programme started with Ga­­­n­apathi Stuthi, which is like a prayer at the start of any performance so that no impediments come in the way of the recital.

The next was Ram Bhajan, a dance form depicting the entire story of Ramayana.  These two pieces were group performances. The third piece that was performed was Niratatadang, choreographed by Maya Rao and was in praise of Lord Krishna.

This piece basically was based on the technical nuances of Kathak with a lot of Th­ukdas and Params performed by Chrumathi Srik­anth.

This was followed by Dhamaar, which was again a technical piece by Bharathi Mit­tal based on the taal dhamaar.

Bhandish Ras Bharte was performed by Chitra Arvind herself and was based on two nayikas, abhinaya and nritya. Based on Viraha and Shringara, this was the only piece choreographed by Mouliksha and Ishika Parekh, renowned kathak artistes from Ahmedabad.

Chaturan was a newly

composed dance piece and was choreographed and performed by Sumana. The next in line was Prabhandh by Anjana Gupta and she learnt it from Chitra Venugopal, her teacher from Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. The finale of the even­ing was a nritya-based piece called Tarana. This essentially had a lot of footwork and piro­uettes like chakkars. This was actually choreographed by Mo­ul­­iksha but they re-choreographed it for the group.

Says Charulatha, a student of bharatanatyam, “I always enjoy attending such cultural prog­r­ammes, be it music or dance. This is the third time I have come for a dance performance by Chitra Arvind and Bharathi Mittal. It is nice to see how their performances are different and unique every single time.”