Gayatri Sriram, the dancer featured by South Indian Cultural Association at Ravindra Bharati recently proved good at not just at abhinaya but all the ingredients of Bharatanatyam. She has been performing for the last fifteen years.
Gayatri is a sishya of Minal Prabhu, who is a disciple of the prestigious institution Kalakshetra. Besides performances in India, she has experience of performing at important cultural centres across the world like Paris, London, Singapore, The Hague. Krishna Gana Sabha presented her with Rukmini Devi Arundale award. She had her own orchestra including her guru Minal Prabhu conducting the show with perfect expression and commanding jati spells. Except for varnam, rest of the numbers were her own choreography.
Gayatri opened the performance with a Kautvam on Siva and followed it with ‘Ardhanareeswaram Aradhayami’ in Kumudakriya of Mutthuswamy Dikshitar. This was written in praise of Lord Siva as the symbol of ‘ultimate duality’. Then it was time to come out with a major show piece varnam for which she chose a composition written in Sanskrit on Srikrishna- Sringaralola Muralidhara Gopimanohara in ragamalika, written by Blasubramanya Sarma and G. Gurumurthi.This was full of impressive jati spells long and short as it progresses - well choreographed by her guru Minal Prabhu.
As to the abhianya part what the poets chose were themes on Krishna’s childhood, with Gopikas, ‘Kuchelopakhyanam’, ‘Draupadi Mana Samrakshanam’ and ‘Gitopadesam’. In this number, abhinaya took as much time as jati presentation did. She succeeded in interpreting themes, clubbing the histrionics and changing into characters.
This was followed by padam ‘Sogasu’ in Sahana misrachapu and Ashtapadi ‘Sakhiye Keshi Madana Mudaram’ from Gita Govindam of Jayadeva – both abhinaya numbers. She then concluded her show with Tillana in Suddha Dhanyasi, Talamalika, using the sahitya part for a couple of bhakti oriented narratives. vocal support of While Balasubramanya Sarma gave the vocal support, G. Gurumurthy on mridangam, Jayaram Kikkeri on flute and Prasanna Kumar was on rhythm and morsing.
