Narthaki, who has won her place as one of the fiery, totally in control and unique dancers of the country, had rightly named her repertoire “The Colours of Dance”. The hot June evening melted into the many hues of life — the sparkling joy of movement, the warm glow of a mother’s love, the simmering passion of an inexperienced chit of a girl, the flickering dilemma of a parent torn between love for her daughter and fear of society’s ridicule, the humility of a devotee. They rose and ebbed and flowed like waves, exemplifying the classical description that likens the sanchari bhavas (transient emotions) to waves that rise intermittently, only to mingle again into the ocean that is the sthayi bhava (abiding emotion).
Narthaki opened with a 9-beat melaprapti (invocatory composition) in Khanda Triputa tala and raga Amritavarshini followed by a shloka, “Kaarunya poorna nayane”, in praise of Lakshmi, describing her glory from head to foot. This is about Soundaryavalli Thaayaar. There was both great ease (what one might call itminaan) and precision, embedded in irrepressible joy. The simplicity of the movements was set against sparks of light, fast footwork.
Next Narthaki took up a lullaby of Subramania Bharati, “Chinnanchiru kiliye”. Here she became the doting mother, her face suffused with an ecstatic love as she showed the mother playing with her child and after a momentary fright when the child disappears, declaring that seeing her child so much as shed a tear breaks her heart.
“I’m not fit to make a baby but when I perform this song I perform my dream,” Narthaki had said poignantly in introducing this song. This brilliant dancer belongs to the third gender, and having faced innumerable troubles in life, has triumphed not only as a much awarded performer but as a champion and social activist for others whom society punishes.
The pain of the outcaste is also the pain of the soul banished from its divine origins, or so the poets and seers have said down the ages. And pain too is at the crux of Nayaki Bhava, in which Narthaki has trained under the celebrated guru of Bharatanatyam Kitappa Pillai.
This approach to depicting mythology is based on the philosophy that the human soul longs perpetually to be reunited with the Almighty. The relationship is represented as the nayika (also nayaki, the ‘heroine’ or leading lady) and her beloved (the nayak or ‘hero’).
This philosophy also known as madhura bhakti sees shringar rasa, the rasa of love, as a metaphor, allowing poets and artists to depict it at numerous levels.
In Annamalai Reddiyar’s Kavadi chindu song that she performed next, Narthaki gave a masterful display of abhinaya. The song, “Paadhiraathiri velayil” (“In the middle of the night”) is the lament of a mother whose young daughter has eloped with Kartikeya. The dancer however started the story from the point where Kartikeya convinces the girl, using the introductory music to mime him catching her attention, her initially refusing, and — within the same glance — acquiescing. The song began at the point where the mother discovered the window through which they had escaped. In this and the subsequent interpretation of the song, Narthaki’s attention to detail, such as adjusting the lamp wick, the mother listening for wagging tongues, created a world of intense drama.
She ended with a tillana in raga Nalinakanti, in Sankirna chaapu tala, another nine-beat composition. It was rounded off with a mangalam which seeks forgiveness from the gods, the sages and the audience.
In a conversation after the performance, Narthaki mentioned that when she goes on stage she addresses the audience as god. Indeed this magnificent simplicity could not have been better exemplified.
This was the first time, Narthaki said, that she performed to recorded music. The quality of recording (or was it Azad Bhavan’s audio system?) left something to be desired. But dance is Narthaki’s natural state. The elements will keep rhythm.
