I love when I write in detail about a performance shortly after the show! The emotions are fresh, and so many details that we slowly forget are still crystal clear.
In April 2023, we performed Chandalika, which was an exceptional experience. Even though I wrote about it in detail, I didn’t mention twisted ankles, work schedules, and all the last-minute re-choreography we were forced to do. Perhaps we will perform it again; perhaps we won’t. But a show on this scale is always a precious memory.
Shortly after the show, we also staged a performance for the children of the Academy. Bharatanatyam is a performing art, and unless children have the opportunity to perform, they lose interest. Pressed for time, unsure of how we would pull it off, we still managed a full performance for the students of the Academy of Indian Dances!
And then, in December, we performed in Bengaluru too.
If there’s one thing we learn show after show, it is that things don’t go according to plan. Less than a month before the show, our teacher, Guru Mythili Raghavan, fell and broke her wrist. There was no way she could play the nattuvangam for us.
For three days, we were in limbo. What could we do? No one can play the nattuvangam without practice! Should we cancel? Reschedule? Make do with us taking turns playing the nattuvangam imperfectly?
After having practised for so man months, we ruled out the idea of cancelling or postponing. We arranged studio recordings and tweaked old recordings we had to suit our new choreographies … and we began to practise again.
I’ve written before about the adage that the show must go on, and the fact that together, we can make sure it does. And yet again, that’s what we did.
I would not say that the show was perfect (do I ever?). But I was left with the sense of having done so much, having made it happen, despite all the obstacles we faced. It’s unbelievable sometimes that the age difference between the youngest and oldest of us is over thirty years. In this picture, can you tell who is the youngest and who the oldest?
Like every other performance, Guru Samarpanam too raced by. One piece after another, we did our best. It’s incredible how we work together. During the first piece, a thorn went into one dancer’s foot. While someone carefully, patiently got it out, someone else called our dancers in the sound room and asked them to hold on to the music and not play the next piece. Checking on one another, confident that we could make things work, yet on edge as we tried to do our best … Guru Samarpanam was a lovely way to end the year.
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