life has its many firsts. the DIAF was a very attractive multi event, multi venue affair. the only drawback I'm a sunset Cinderella in a city labeled unsafe for women and i doubt I'd ever be big enough to be let out for such things unchaperoned by a member of family. so moving out of self loathing misery let's get to the point.
oridssi:
on 16th dec my parents and i were witness to the opening of the classical dance segment of DIAF and it was splendid!
the evening under the sprawling branches of the peepal tree on also the coldest delhi day, began with mrs. sanjukta mohapatra performing oridssi. she's the disciple and daughter-in-law of famous oridssi exponent late shri kelucharan mohapatra. i've previously only seen oridssi in school and never could(and still can't) tell the difference between the various mudras in the various classical dance forms! i doubt they're different at all so majorly but for me they do mostly the same stuff in different dresses! i never thought i'd ever say such things about a beauty that is dance, but ignorance brings out the trash. so the dance we enjoyed began with a ganesh vandana and then a prayer to lord vishnu. these were followed by dance presentations on a poem and the very beautifully done-varsha. I've never watched a professionally done dance and with such reverence...it was touching! i don't know what else to say... my hands are frozen!
kuchipudi:
the second piece of the evening was a dance performance by the very famous couple-raja and radha reddy. before the dance began i was showered by snippets of well known information like he's got two wives-radha reddy and kaushalya reddy, each has a daughter who've both completed school etc. soon enough the attraction of the night himself came forward on stage and gave a li'l explanation of what was to come...shiv lila! he mentioned why he's called the neelkanth, umasutham and mrityunjaya and also a little tale of the demon tripura! i only sat wondering why a whole state in a deeply religious country of ours would be named after a demon, considering superstition almost in every way rules our lives. but then we love contradiction don't we? so now that mr reddy explained the whats and the whys of his dance performance,i just waited for the how! it started pretty slow...mr and mrs just entered from ends of the stage and started moving around in circles...literally! then it picked pace with mrs kaushalya reddy doin the rhythmic toda bit...man i loved it! the ballet carried on in much the same way as he'd mentioned with beautiful characterisations of and by the couple, facial expressions and mudras. now since I'm no art critique nor an avid follower of dance of any kind, i'll stick to my version and impressions. it was good but the petite mrs reddy was seemingly getting too old for this while the chill seemed to have travelled up mr reddy's leg. i mean no disrespect to these very talented far superior seniors, but then 'bandar kya jane adrak ka swad!'. so basically it was something new, something good and something that went over my head after knocking some sense into it!
lesson of the day: i should've stuck to learning bharatnatyam when i got an awesome teacher instead of showing him how adamant a donkey i could be! boohoo...i started making wrong decisions when i couldn't even spell it!
modern ballet:
on the 17th, monday, we went to catch a contemporary dance performance by a group from the Slovak republic. the presentation was titled "night peace". momma chose the dance over kathak and manipuri because we'd had enough of open air theatres and chilly evenings and as kamani
auditorium is far better, we headed to it! we got there a li'l late, though just in time for the dance. I'll give you my interpretation of the ballet...i have no idea of what was meant to be portrayed or what was. going by the title of night, here is what i picked up: night falls among chaos and people having spent all day in their own activities, in their own world at their own leisure, forget that there is a world beyond their own. to them every stranger is a nobody, you'd not even register their presence were they to stare at you in your face. the night brings to you its own gifts of peace and rest, but the human psyche always has a zillion things to do before it goes to bed. no one stops to take the selfless gifts she brings, no one wants it. period. you've got parties to attend, people to meet and of course carnal pleasures to be attained, but the night can
wait. then comes the burn out! life comes to a standstill and you just land up like a log on the bed. once the sleep takes over that is when life's beauty actually comes forward. but sleep is hard enough, dreams are harder. you've got to fight the demons of the life in daylight in the darkness of your head, you've got to get it out of your system. peace can only reign when the place for it is free of clutter that blocks the drainage system of the mind! that is when night becomes peaceful...that is when life becomes beautiful! relationships becomes clearer and emotions becomes sort themselves out. love pours through life! this is night! this is peace!
we had to walk out towards the end due to lack of comprehension by my company, so i'm not sure how it all ended but i do know(and console myself with) that we didn't miss much.
my cheeky comments go like this: the guys were very good...tall well built good looking hunks! their dancing agility made me realise that if i were to roll like they were, I'd keep on rolling like a cylinder! all in all a good show, with typical Indian humour and movie like comments. the best ones i heard went like,"yaar yeh to saanwariya style hai, samajh nai aayega!"; when the music went boom like a bomb, a little baby cried making the whole crowd laugh out real loud! next time the baby spoke, it was a cute giggle when they were trying to portray the self-demons being fought and most people thought she had a terrible itch, one guy even said she was a chicken!!
bharatnatyam:
since we still had time on our hands and momma wanted to see the youth festival, we headed to ashok hotel's amphitheatre just when bharatnatyam group dance began. a young duet was on, and was done very beautifully. i mean it...vigour and vitality severely contrasted with ageold movements of the day before. the last piece presented was a group dance titled "geet govindam" and was an outlet of gopis' love for lord krishna. good coordination, simply to comprehend and
quite tastefully presented. i enjoyed it, and thankfully so did my parents!
muzok: fusion music
the last jig of the day was a fusion music band. this one from kiromal college's music society. i had absolutely no expectations and since i'd never heard of them, or heard them, i simply waited. guitars rolled out. the usual. a synthesier was placed, i yawned. a tabla came, i took interest. a violin and dholak followed, i decided my parents will now sit easy. the guys came out and my eyes were wide open! now we're talking...they looked pretty much like the rest of 18-21 yr olds i know, but still i soaked in all at offer. :D hehehe! then came the pin prick-pa says,"kitne lousy ladke hain, koi bhi khana nai khata kya?". does he always do it on purpose? oh whatever! so now back to the band...tehy began with a female choir doing a prayer, then a duet choir doin the necessary desh bhakti, then a powerful rehman composition to top it up! by this time, my mother is thoroughly bored! then they bring on bruce springsteen's june! yahoo! umm, well, my parents are looking at my beaming face...wondering if they're finally on my turf! bring it on! so they...and the cutest guy is the lead singer, ah my luck! if only we'd stayed till after their jig, i could've known his name. but then my parents had had enough. so here we come to an end of my diaf...i think so.
