DOHA INDIAN classical dancers Rama Vaidyanathan and Rani Khanam wowed the Doha audience with their outstanding dance performances during the recent Soorya Indian festival held here recently.
In the course of the two-hour long programme hosted by Saarang, the Qatar chapter of Soorya, the two dancers presented two different traditions of Indian dance shedding light on India’s rich performing arts tradition, which encompasses theatre, dance as well as music.
The programme opened with Rama Vaidyanathan’s rendering of Peacock Dance – a Bharatanatyam performance. Bharatanatyam, considered a perfect form of performing art, utilises music, rhythm and body movements for expressing human emotions while Peacock Dance emulates the elegant movements of India’s national bird, a symbol of beauty, pride and grace.
Vaidyanathan’s performance named Anjali, stole the heart of the audience. The performance was also an exemplary elucidation of the strong communicative potential of the artform.
It was followed by a beautiful piece called Navarasa Mohana, a sequential depiction of the nine human emotions (love, mirth, fury, compassion, disgust, horror, courage, wonder and tranquility) pertaining to different situations, in a single performance which establishes the virtuosity of the performer.
Rising to the occasion, Vaidyanathan utilised the typical geometric Bharatanatyam movements or steps to depict emotions and situations in the story told by Krishna in ‘Bhagavatam’.
Rani Khanam, one of India’s foremost Kathak exponents, blended her Kathak steps with Sufi dance movements and performed to the tune of a Hindustani background score showcasing her admirable ability to fuse elements of a east Indian dance form with extraneous elements like north Indian music and Sufi steps.
Her performance of the devotional Shiva Stuthi songs composed to please Shiva - the celestial dancer in Indian epics - demonstrated steps considered the exclusive to Kathak.
The performance, with variation in tempo from slow to fast, ended in a dramatic climax and offered a different dance and music experience to the Doha audience.
The programme concluded with a joint dance performance by Rama and Rani. The next Soorya India festival will be held in Doha in November 2013.
Soorya Krishnamoorthy, founder of Soorya Stage and Film Society, had accompanied the troupe to Doha. The artistes will go on to perform in Kuwait, Bahrain, Muscat, Dubai and Abu Dhabi during the current tour.
Soorya is a leading non-profit, non-commercial, voluntary film and theatre organisation with no office building or paid staff anywhere, and has its headquarters in Trivandrum, the capital of Kerala, the southern most state of India. It has chapters in 36 countries around the world.
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