KOMALA VARADAN'S PAINSTAKING EXPERIMENT

No art form can be regarded as having attained a final, never-to-be-changed identity. Tradition is not a static concept; it represents a continuum from the past through the present to the future. Today almost every dancer who is established has dreams of pushing the frontiers of her chosen dance style and presenting something outside the contours of convention. The test of success or otherwise of such endeavours is how aesthetic the result is. Komala Varadan recently took up, as her latest endeavour, the challenge of presenting Tulsidas' Sree Ramcharit Manas in Bharatanatyam style following the standard recital format. She presented her programme on 25 August in New Delhi. For this experimental venture, S. Varadan, a former Secretary to the Government of India, the dancer's husband, and a trained Carnatic musician, had set to music the chaupais and doha-s selected from Tulsidas' epic poem in the Awadhi dialect of Hindi. Komala had choreographed dances in Bharatanatyam style to the selected lyrics and sought to present them as varnam, keertana, padam and such standard items of the Bharatanatyam repertoire. Her aim was, in her own words, to present Bharatanatyam "in a manner that the Northern audience would be able to easily understand and follow."