Nrityagram Dance
City Halls, Glasgow
Mary Brennan
FIVE STARS
If Alchemy was the umbrella title for Southbank Centre's festival of Asian arts - in Glasgow over the weekend - then "enchantment" was the essential epithet for the Indian classical dance presented by Surupa Sen and Bijayini Satpathy.
Given the mindset and practice of the Nryitagram company from Bangalore, however, their solos and duets are more than exquisite statements of Odissi technique, they are akin to acts of devotion. In certain held poses, these elegantly lissome dancers look as if they had stepped out of ancient temple friezes to tell stories of Krishna and Radha - his infidelities, her sense of betrayal, his pleadings and their inevitable reconciliations, all vividly expressed in Sen's own choreographic invocation of (thoroughly researched ) tradition, Sanskrit literature and the music of composer Pandit Raghunath Panigrahi.
This music, played live, swirls through the stark (and shockingly empty) reaches of the hall, layered with a rhythmic allure that draws Sen, and us, into the very pulse and heart of Khandita - a solo that captures Radha's anger and anguish over Krishna's affair in a nuanced litany of facial expressions and precise gestures. There is a wealth of rejection and resolve in the very quirk of a pointed finger. Bijayini Satpathy then charts Krishna's bid for forgiveness in Priyé Charusheelé, counterpointing his confident swagger with a pleading as beguiling as the lyric flute that wheedles alongside the movements.
Life and death, creation and destruction, male and female: two supposed opposites that, in the closing duet Vibhakta, are intertwined as one. This is a tour de force of precise, percussive (and synchronous) footwork, of sudden airborne springing, delicately articulate gestures and harmonious rapport between two great artistes.
Some seventy of us witnessed this - where were you, Glasgow?
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