The angst that Sujatha Vijayaraghavan had, observing the trend of organisers demanding payment from dancers for performance slots, made her share this feeling with Late R. Krishnaswamy (secretary, Narada Gana Sabha), which led to the birth of Natyarangam, the dance-wing of NGS. He spontaneously offered the auditorium for a year on an experimental basis.
Enthused by the response, Sujatha brought together a band of like-minded people, equally passionate about dance: K.S.Subramaniam, Charukesi Viswanathan, Maj Gen A. Balasubramaniam and his wife Kalpakam, S.Kannan and S.Janaki. The recent ones to come on board are K.S. Natarajan and the enthusiastic couple, P.C. Ramakrishna and Hyma.
Beginning with the idea of presenting young, talented dancers every month, Natyarangam grew in stature to showcase the wealth of talent, fresh and mature, as well as to organise an annual festival, which soon became a talked about event in Chennai’s Dance calendar.
The speciality of this festival was the inter-disciplinary approach, which brought together dancers, scholars, composers, artists, musicians, writers, historians, theatre personalities to explore and expand the boundaries of the art form. This festival challenged many a young dancer to think creatively and conceptualise and present a complete programme based on varied themes given to them.
Beginning with the festival titled, ‘Vande Mataram.’ Natyarangam has constantly looked at new themes each year and this time they looked back on their 20-year journey, as they paid tribute to the man who led them all, R.Krishnaswamy, and by selecting the best dancers, who had honed their skills on this platform, to perform.
‘Bharatham Vimsathi’ thus showcased their journey, which enshrined and encapsulated the variety and rich diversity of the country from landscape, philosophy to the arts.
A range of topics from narratives, relationships to philosophical quests was dealt with by dancers Priyadarsini Govind, Chitra Chandrasekar Dasarathy, Vaibhav Arekar, Praveen Kumar, Sangeeta Isvaran , A. Lakshmanaswamy, Gayathri Balagurunathan, Indira Kadambi, Uma Namboodripad Satyanarayanan, Lakshmi Parthasarathy Athreya, Vijay Madhavan, Lakshmi Gopalaswamy and Satyanarayana Raju.
Each dancer performed with a high degree of excellence, as they brought to the stage their presentations, which were premiered in earlier festivals in a flash back mode.
