Another surprise was a gutsy fusion dance featuring both traditional and modern forms to Thyagaraja’s sublime composition, ‘Enduro Mahanubhaavulu.’ The most heartening feature of the competition - in junior and senior sections, with 6 members in each group - were the faces. Bright, happy, fair or tanned faces, enthusiastic, eager or nervous, most of them smiling and some with dimpled cheeks. Most remembered to smile as they danced. Most dancers also moved their lips in sync with the lyrics.
The groups, in junior (Std 4,5,6 and 7) and senior (Std 8,9 and10) categories, consisted of all girls, all boys and mixed teams. This posed a problem. Some of the dances from the girls-only group featured boy characters, so what’s the way out? Simple! Paint moustaches on the upper lips of girls dressed up as boys and hide their plaits under a cloth band. The folk dances naturally were the most energetic, rendered with gusto, to scintillating music. So energetic in fact that some embellishments from the props fell off.
Dancers to the lilting Marathi rendering of ‘Taijiba’ dispensed sparkling smiles generously while flinging their limbs with abandon in perfect sync with the music. So did the exponents of the Gujarati Dandia number. Thank god that the treat does not end here. More smiles, more vigour and energy await us in the second leg of the competition on Thursday morning, at the same venue.
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