It isn’t often that there is a dance festival dedicated to male dancers. Which is what the Natyanjali Trust has been doing for the past 12 years. The Nartaka Dance Festival provides a good forum to male, classical Bharatanatyam dancers, and each year, offers a platform to many up-and-coming as well as senior artistes
The Trust was started by Jayalakshmi Satagopan in 1980. After her demise, her daughter, Prema Satish took over and started the Nartaka Festival. Every year, the festival also honours one dancer. Prof. C.V. Chandrashekhar, V.P. Dhananjayan, late Narasimhachari, late Adyar K. Lakshman, Satyanarayana Raju and Justin McCarthy were some of the artistes who have been honoured in the past. This year’s recepient was Vaibhav Arekar.
“My mother was a true lover of the arts,” said Prema. “She always felt that male dancers do not get as many opportunities as female artistes. With the encouragement of Prof. C.V. Chandrashekhar (who also named it), this festival came into being. Over the years, the festival has been a great launching pad for many young dancers.”
Young team
This year, the two-day festival held at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, featured N. Srikant, Kasi, Aditya PV, Anand Satchidanandan, Mithun Shyam among others. Actor Sripriya, who presented the 12th Nartaka Award (consisting a purse of Rs 25,000) to Vaibhav Arekar, belongs to an illustrious lineage of gurus including K.N. Dhandayuthapani Pillai and Rajamanickam Pillai. She said that owing to lack of opportunities many male artistes choose to teach rather than perform. “Such forums not only promote talented artistes but also bring in a different energy to the stage.” Vaibhav Arekar could not perform at the festival because of a shoulder injury.
Post the award function, N. Srikanth, trained under eminent gurus, including Shanmugasundaram Pillai, Dr. Saraswat and Dr. Padma Subrahmanyam, gave an impressive performance, whose highlight was the varnam in Ritigowla. Nandini Anand on the vocal and Aswathy V. Nair on the nattuvangam along with Nagai Sriram (mridangam) and Vijayraghavan (violin) complemented the artiste.
The Thevaram, ‘Meela Adimai’ in Madhyamavati performed by Anand Satchidandan, a student of the Dhananjayans, stood out for its eloquent abhinaya.
A energetic Khamas varnam marked the recital of Mithun Sham, a disciple of Padmini Ramachandran.
‘Theeradu Vilaiyattu’ by Kasi Aysola (trained under Viji Prakash) was a nuanced portrayal while a Navaragamalika Varnam by Aditya PV (trained by gurus Kiran Subramanyam and Sandhya Kiran, Bengaluru), showcased the idea behind such an endeavour.
The accompanying artistes made the performances more interesting.
Vocal support by Preeti Mahesh, G. Srikant, Binu Venugopal and Bharati Venugopal was excellent, so was the nattuvangam (for all the artistes) by Deepika, Jayalakshmi Venugopal and Parshwanath Upadhye.