Columnist
The Music Academy dance festival

After watching the 12th Dance Festival
of the Music Academy, which drew
sizeable audiences for both morning and
evening performances, I was nagged by questions
of where we are going in Bharatanatyam—and
other dance traditions too. While dance as an art
form is becoming more and more glamourised,
you wonder, “Where have the silences, the
quietude and subtleties gone?”
In what is generally regarded as a formal
ceremony with a protocol, the inauguration
threw up the first surprise in the very casually
groomed chief guest Mark W. Morris (a name
to reckon with in the West as Artistic Director
and Dancer of Mark Morris Dance Group, New
York), his work-a-day clothes, striking what the
Hindi-phile would call ras-bhang, amidst all the
gorgeously Conjeevaram clad ladies and formally
dressed men. The organisers probably missed
informing him to remove his footwear while
taking the stage with Nataraja’s statue presiding
over the performance area with a lighted lamp.
His speech was all about loving Carnatic music,
and as friend and admirer of Nritya Kalanidhi
awardee Lakshmi Vishwanathan, he confined
himself to praising her art. The other great
dancer Barshnikov (who was present) came and
went; both guests hardly had any interaction
with other dancers and art lovers attending the
festival. They seemed to be confined to the hotel
most of the time.