Sri Krishna Gana Sabha
Celebrated Bharatanatyam dancer Shobana’s abundant talent is natural and unfettered, as she makes her own rules. Her solo performance was a proof of that. Her artistry was exciting and delightful, in turn.
There is a marked change in the way Shobana perceives nritta. It is no more the well-defined sollukattus but part-visualised, part-improvised mridangam korvais, that accompany her.
These mridangam korvais are not dance sequences, but freewheeling, nadai-bedam sequences within the tala cycle. Shobana’s energy is focussed on following the improvised rhythm; her eyes and arms do all the dancing while the steps are perfunctory, just there. It maybe argued that the speed is too fast to envisage completed adavus, and that is right. Incidentally, the dancer wore two sets of ankle bells that must have been too heavy for easy mobility, but good for keeping time.
The effect of this improvisation-kind of nritta is that there is no drama in the jathis. It is like one long sentence, spoken so fast that you cannot make out the words, but only the fact that the dancer is trying to keep pace, and that she has finished perfectly.
The melodious Gambhira Nattai Mallari (Tisra Triputa, Lalgudi Jayaraman) opened with movements that followed a soulful vilamba kala. When the pace changed to the madhyama kala, Shobana moved to rhythms that went tangentially against the composition, matching mridangist Ananth R. Krishnan’s korvais all the while. The talented time-keeper-disciple (Srividya Sailesh), who would normally have been the centre of attention , became a bystander. This was a new experience.
Exploration of tala continued in the Thodi padavarnam, ‘Daani saamajendra’ (Adi, Swati Tirunal). In the trikala jathi, ‘Tha ri tha ri tha jam’, Shobana followed the sollus in the vilamba kala, went contrary to sollus in the madhyama kala, with all of them coming back together in the third speed. While this jathi resounded with definition, the third jathi ‘Tom din’ did not have any sollus at all. This was another new experience.
Shobana’s stamp of individuality is also there in her delineations, which are a mixture of natyadharmi, stylised expression, and lokadharmi, realistic expression. She built up beautiful imagery of a love-struck heroine pining for Padmanabha, trying to coax a friend to be a messenger of love. The beauty of spring came to life in a tanam (Preethy Mahesh) as Shobana’s energy filled the detailing. The sthala purana of the Anantha Padmanabhaswamy temple when the god appears in front of Diwakar muni to test him was re-told with finesse.
Three padams were performed in quick succession — a Ninda Sthuthi, ‘Yethai kandu’ (Kalyani, Ghanam Krishna Iyer), ‘Emani thelupudu’(Ananda Bhairavi, Kshetrayya) and ‘Kodi koose’ (Saurashtram, Kshetrayya). While Shobana has a natural feel for drama, the javali kind of treatment meted out to the Kshetrayya padams, especially the Ananda Bhairavi tearful leave-taking one, did not have the required depth.
The musicians came into their own here — Kalaiarasan (violin) played some beautiful music throughout, while Mahesh (flute) provided the inspiring breaks. Shobana finished with a beautiful, slow, sumptuous Pahadi thillana (misra chapu, Lalgudi Jayaraman) that brought out the best in the musicians, especially Preethy, who sang, softly gliding from one note to the next.
