Every performance by the Nrityagram Dance Ensemble feels like a revelation. We are lucky that the company visits New York regularly. Led by the dancer and choreographer, Surupa Sen, and based in an ashram-like “dance village” near the Southern Indian city of Bangalore, these performers, who specialize in the classical Indian dance form, odissi, are both thrilling dancers and mesmerizing actresses.
Paired with the musicality of their instrumentalists and singers, they reveal how movement, melody, rhythm, physical beauty and storytelling can find full expression. Even without knowing much about South Asian dance, one cannot help but feel that these are great artists.
According to the programme notes at the Joyce, Surupa Sen’s idea of bringing Odissi and Kandyan dance together came out of her study of the “Natya Shastra,” an Indian treatise on the performing arts. It got her thinking about the complementary nature of the two art forms. As she writes in the programme, she dreamed of “a collaboration…that connects us to our ancient ‘wholeness,’ almost as if the Indian Ocean never separated us.” It’s a lovely idea.
For four years the Chitrasena and Nrityagram dancers have worked together. At the Joyce there were three dancers from Nrityagram and two from Chitrasena, all women. (All were excellent.) A lush, mellifluous score – for flute, violin, finger cymbals, voice, and drum – was commissioned from the composer Pandit Raghunath Panigrahi.
In the segments where both the Sri Lankan and Indian dancers appeared there were two percussionists, each drawing out the rhythms of one dance tradition or the other (both Odissi and Kandyan dance have their own specific rhythmic patterns). Surupa Sen, who has already pushed Odissi in new directions by creating ensemble choreography for what was originally a solo form, has created an absorbing and varied evening of dances—solos, duets, ensembles—that draws on both traditions, a thrilling conversation between two techniques, movement qualities, and styles. In this, she was assisted by the choreographer Heshma Wignaraja, of Chitrasena.
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| Mithilani Munasingha, Pavithra Reddy and Thaji Dias combine two ancient forms of South Asian dance |
As she writes, in her choreography the two styles “[meet] in space, to challenge, combine, and embrace each other through musical conversation and rhythmic dialogue.” And what does this dialogue reveal? Two styles that have much in common—a shared symbolism, for example, and a low centre of gravity, as well as a strong rhythmic component, and a desire to charm—but which are also in stark contrast.
Kandyan dance is more vertical, odissi is all curves; the first is dynamic and muscular, the second fluid, ever-shifting, difficult to pin down; one is more athletic, the other more theatrical and poetic. The contrasts are endless. The Kandyan dancers are younger, and conform more to the idea we have of what dancers should look like: tall, long of limb, lithe, strong. Their costumes reveal more of the body, with bare midriffs and gathered pant-legs showing off their long, powerfully turned-out and angularly bent legs (roughly like a plié in second position, in ballet terms).
Their hair is gathered in a long braid at the top of their heads (the end of which is attached, with a ribbon, to the waist of their trousers). The top-knot further elongates their line. By contrast, the odissi dancers wear their hair in thick scrolls at the back of their heads, decorated with flowers. The Kandyan dancers’ arms tend to be extended in long, clean positions, and they use the fingers less. They wear lighter makeup and use their eyes in a more straightforward way, and their heads are held more erect, more proudly.
They smile more. It is a more direct art form, less coy and complicated than that of the odissi dancers. Their steps are bigger—they cover much more ground – and they raise their feet higher with each step; their jumps are more powerful. If odissi tends toward legato, adagio movement, Kandyan dance opts more for staccato, allegro. (The odissi dancers seemed to use a greater variety of foot positions, sometimes pointing their toes, sometimes flexing, and everything in between.) And the Sri Lankan dancers use their chests differently, sometimes pulsing them slightly to complement the rhythms of their feet and legs—this gives the dance a more “folk-dance like” feel. There is a lot of joy in their dancing—their beaming smiles reflect not only an aesthetic choice, but also the physical pleasure of movement.
The odissi dancers, in contrast, are more controlled, more artful, less direct. Each dance is a story—even when it contains no narrative - told with every part of the body, from the eyes to the tip of a finger and toe. Nothing is left to chance. But the combination of the two styles is very pleasing, because we get the muscularity and dynamism of one crossed with the intricacy and nuance of the other. The two enter a lively back-and-forth, in which the eye is drawn first to one dancer, and then to another, always with admiration and fresh interest. One of Surupa Sen’s many talents as a choreogapher is that she manages to create contrasts – especially in cameo-like solos and conversational duets -while preserving flow and a sense of momentum.
Each group respects and enjoys the artistry of the other, without any temptation to imitate. In the final piece of the evening, there was a charming passage in which two odissi and one Kandyan dancer mimed a game of dice. The Kandyan dancer started off the game, throwing the imaginary dice lustily, eyes widening with delight at every winning roll. Meanwhile, the other two observed and plotted. With cunning, they stole the dice; the Kandyan dancer’s eyes flashed with anger as she pursued and berated them. In the end, the two graceful tricksters gave in, and all was forgiven. This little scene perfectly captured the give and take between the two companies.
Not all the dances were combined, however. Surupa Sen performed a magical mime solo in which she acted out a jealous scene between Krishna and Radha, followed by Krishna’s guilty plea for forgiveness, all based on a twelfth century poem. As she mimed the words “you are the universe…the limpid crescent moon resting in your hair,” her eyes softened, her fingers traced the delicate line of the moon, and then shimmered around her body. She seemed to emanate light. Time stopped. Not many dancers, in any style, can manage this. |
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