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NAPERVILLE, Ill.
Well-known Bharata Natyam danseuse Urmila Sathyanarayanan from Chennai performed “Meera: the Lotus of Prem” presented by Natya Dance Theatre (NDT) at the Pfeiffer Auditorium here, May 10. The story of the Rajput princess who renounced her all for the divine flute-player Krishna was narrated in English and enacted to a pre-recorded soundtrack mix by Rajkumar Bharathi of lyrical and instrumental music in Brij Bhasha (Hindi), Rajasthani and Tamil. Choreography and artistic direction were brought together by the creative genius of co-dancer Sankar Kandaswamy from Malaysia.
Student-dancers accompanying from Sathyanarayanan’s Natya Sankalpaa School were Amritha Varshini Murali, Swathy Ashok, Sahana Rajmohan and Sukanya Kaur. Technical and light design was done by Sai Venkatesh.
“Meera” is solo-artist Sathyanarayanan’s first attempt at a group presentation. “I’ve always been interested in presenting thematic productions and have already done several but only as solo performances. However, Panchali Sapatham (“Draupadi’s Curse”) that I performed solo for a decade was converted into a group presentation. Meera seemed a natural choice for I have done several standalone dances to her bhajans. The idea was to highlight the all-consuming devotion of the saint rather than the historical accuracy of her life-story, which is based here on Swami Shivananda’s version,” Sathyanarayanan told Desi Talk. “To adapt to the regional theme, shades of Kathak and classical dances from the north have been introduced, such that the pure dance segments are not completely in Bharata Natyam,” she clarified.
Their gestural expressions (abhinaya) cut across barriers of language to communicate different moods (rasa). The scheming jealousy of the sister-in-law, which served as emotional counterpoint to the ecstasy of Meera’s all-consuming love (prema), contrasted with the comic entry of the folksy snake-charmer that lightened up the sustained tension with laughter (hasya). Both characters were well played. The erotic sentiment (shringaara) toward the elusively transcendental Krishna was again accentuated through the royal household’s dark worship, for material gain, of the bloodthirsty goddess Kali. Pangs of separation, tantalizing glimpses of the beloved, steadfast devotion and fleeting reunions of Urmila’s “Meera” were rendered manifest through a myriad delectable nuances of feeling before the final surrender.
“The dancing was pleasing to the eye, music great and costumes very apt. The audience, especially younger children, enjoyed every bit of the production mainly because of the English voice-overs,” NDT artistic director Hema Rajagopalan told Desi Talk. Adults may have found that the voice-overs, excessive in the first part, distracted from and overwhelmed the dancing; abhinaya of some characters, especially of Meera’s royal husband, somewhat overdone; and that the Bharata Natyam schooling of the students showed through in attempting to integrate northern dance styles.
The transformation of reverential devotion (bhakti), here toward Vishnu as protector, into a single-minded divinized eroticism is peculiar to the Hindu and wider Indian religious sensibility. This central motif is immediately posed by the mother telling curious infant Meera in jest that Krishna is her ordained husband. Even after this ‘naïve’ attitude blossoms with puberty into the untainted lotus of love, the helpless submission to a higher power keeps resurfacing, for example, in the reenactment of past episodes of Krishna’s saving grace toward all devotees recalled in the bhajan “Hari Tum Haro.”
The repertoire of songs included such evergreens as “Mere to Giridhar Gopal” and “Pyare Darshan Deejo Aao” and, toward the end, of the plaintive movie renderings by M.S. Subbulakshmi, the Tamil Meera, such as the unforgettable “Kaatrinilae Varum Geetham.” This artistic eclecticism, which extends to the dance medium and now before a diaspora audience, serves to make the Rajput princess even more of the pan-Indian woman saint she has long become.
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