Of two dance titans, untold stories and a rain-soaked weekend

Earlier this month, it was a wetter weekend in Rajasthan than recent memory serves. the end of it, everyone leaving the two-day dance festival at Tijara Fort in Alwar and checking out of the Neemrana property in the premises would be chattering about the irony of the timing of this downpour in a desert state, relating it to one of the dances fortuitously titled ‘Nadi’ (river). The entire premises, spread out over several acres of greenery and 19th century forts, was washed with rain on both days — forcing guests and performers alike to race between venues inside sedan ferries, under upturned umbrellas and through sludgy footwear.
On the first day of the festival, Tijara Talkies — one of the grounds’ horic palaces transformed into a modern-day performing arts auditorium — descended into darkness and its stage lit up in midnight blue. The hall was full of whispers and muddy footprints. Leela Samson, Padma Shri-awardee and one of India’s foremost Bharatanatyam dancers, stood onstage in a green and saffron sari, with her greying hair tied in a bun, introducing the performance to follow: “The river has been the very source of life from time immemorial. From Sufi fakirs in the North to Baul singers in Bengal to Sangam poetry and classical composers in the South – an ocean of poetry has been penned inspired the river,” she said.

Within moments, Samson swept to the centre of the stage as the first song of the production began with a fluttering rhythm. Samson’s performance — a collection of six poems in Tamil, Sanskrit, Kannada, Urdu, Hindi and Bengali — dealt with the river, a natural force used as a conduit for earthly connection poets across the Indian subcontinent over centuries. Threaded together acclaimed classical composer Rajkumar Bharathi, the six poems collectively attempted a dialogue between Carnatic and Hindustani music and blended traditional tunes with modern reinventions. The first dance, a thumri, was a solo Samson, whose decades of experience were tossed effortlessly between her ghunghroo-clad ankles as she rippled across the stage like a tumultuous river, often extending her wide smile through her arms to her red-dyed fingertips.
(Standing, third from the left) Leela Samson, Padma Shri-awardee and one of India’s foremost Bharatanatyam dancers. (Photo: Naveen Sharma)
She was then joined her dance group, Spanda, for the next piece that was based on a Rabindranath Tagore poem, depicting a river’s relationship with its admirer. The male dancers seized the river’s role from Samson, encircling her, cornering her, and avoiding her. The softer abhinaya offered a breather before the next performance, a Tamil piece that was more rapid and chaotic, depicting the city of Madurai crumbling under lightning strikes and crushing rains. Dancers dove into water bodies to escape the floods, swishing around glittering dupattas and hurling them to the ground as they fled destruction. This was followed a duet – the nayak and the nayika sharing glances a river bank with undertones of love, mischief, anger and shyness, before the company swarmed in with lamps in hand. The stage plunged into darkness and the lamps whirled, forming halos of yellow and orange and red.

Next evening, the ensemble was replaced Padma Shri-winning famed Bharatanatyam performer Malavika Sarukkai — whose performances abandoned the river motif (the auditorium floor, though, now was a giant puddle reflecting the stage lights, seemed reluctant to do the same). “The power of classical dance,” said Sarukkai into the microphone, “is that it makes us feel, an ability intrinsic to humanity. In today’s world, knowledge and cleverness are considered important, but what the arts do is make you feel things and think ideas you have not come across before,” she said.
(Photo: Naveen Sharma)
Sarukkai’s first performance was a dance of Shiva, an enactment of the moment when, mid-dance, the god accidentally throws an anklet high into the sky and worries how its weight will destroy the earth when it falls. In order to protect the earth, he breaks the anklet’s fall interrupting it first with his head — “Tat,” said Sarukkai, tilting her head — then his shoulder — “Dhit,” she thrusts forward her shoulder — “Thom,” she lifts her thigh — and finally, his toe — “Nom,” her toe breaks the fall. “These were the first four syllables of classical dance as invented Shiva,” she said.

An uptempo flute melody began as Sarukkai’s vivacious expressions projected her earnestness and urgency to the furthest end of the auditorium, adding immediate narrative to her serpentine mudras. She was alone onstage, and her ghungroos’ jangles picked up the pace rapidly before suddenly stopping, and the hall erupted in applause.
After her next performance, which was based on the story of Krishna, Sarukkai would strde centerstage under bright yellow lights for her final dance, to a patriotic female vocalisation familiar to everyone in the auditorium: Vande Mataram. The air seemed to send a shiver in the audience as the barriers of language were shattered and Sarukkai alternately appeared solemn, humbled and overwhelmed — as she later put it — “the energy in the room”.
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