by Leigh Witchel
Nrityagram Dance Ensemble came back to New York City, and brought friends. In a program called “Āhuti” (Offering or Invoking), the Indian ensemble, an exponent of the Odissi style of dance, collaborated with Chitrasena Dance Company from Sri Lanka, which specializes in Kandyan dance. What you saw throughout was more than expert performances, but glittering craft.
Nrityagram is not just a company, but a community near Bangalore founded in 1990 by Protima Gauri devoted to the study of dance. The current artistic director, Surupa Sen, went from performing as a dancer with the company to choreographing, and also provided the sound design. If that seems like a wide array to put on one person’s plate, she has the skills.
At Nrityagram, women run the show. Lynne Fernandez is both the executive director and lighting designer for the company, and few people understand how to light The Joyce Theater better. Sen also led the musicians, and the one man dancing, Kushan Dharmarathna, was used as part of the ensemble, not the central figure.
“Ālāp” was Nrityagram’s first collaboration with Chitrasena. Though the title means the introductory, improvised part of a raga, this was carefully composed. It closed the evening in a big, dance-y way, featuring the full contingent of dancers and musicians, adding musician Koshan Mapatuna, who joined them reciting bols (the vocal syllabification that creates the beat for the dancing) and playing a Kandyan drum.
The difference immediately apparent between the two groups was attire. The five Nrityagram women were dressed in saris and elaborate ornamentation, the two Chitrasena women in simpler pants and tops, with a long ponytail. The Chitrasena women were taller and pulled out, most of the Nrityagram women more compact. Rounding out the Chitrasena trio was Dharmarathna.
The piece mixed the two troupes but left them distinct; it was a meeting more than a melding. Logistics may have played a part, but playing one off the other also served Sen’s purposes.
To begin, everyone faced away from us, stamping. Sen flowed through counterpoint, moving four dancers against three, or two against two against three, discreetly sliding through permutations like room panels noiselessly changing the space.
The Chitrasena women did a duet circling round one another, then a procession led to a quartet, Thaji Dias danced a solo. The granddaughter of Chitrasena’s founders, she is not merely part of the dynasty, but a joyous performer. Her solo led to another change of personnel, as she exited and the Nrityagram women performed a sinuous trio facing towards or away from us in a slowly rotating stage picture.
They left to the side, but the dance continued into a series of short entries and exits letting each dancer be featured. Nrityagram, like Chitrasena, has a pecking order, but like ballet, it isn’t written in stone. Three of the women, Anoushka Rahman, Rohini Banerjee, and Daquil Miriyala, here all attired in shades of red and orange, tended to form an ensemble. But then Miriyala led a quintet, leading into a turn for the trio of Chitrasena dancers, which centered on a jump arcing their backs. Another procession deposited the Chitrasena trio at the center – working one last time as one group in counterpoint to the others, they finally backed out, with Dias and Pavithra Reddy bowing before leaving.
Reddy, who has been with Nrityagram for 30 years, and Dias, were more equal than others, but it was skill as well as position and seniority. They were paired in a duet, “Invoking Shiva,” that wasn’t just an example of their star quality, but of Sen’s mastery of stage space.
Sen could be heard in a voiceover narrative reciting the poem while Reddy personified it, showing the piercing gaze of a god. Dias did a long solo stamping on the diagonal, leaping while tucking her legs. The Chitrasena dancers are aerial, adding jumps that are rarely part of Nrityagram’s palette. Then Dias rotated offstage in haze.
To Jateen Sahu’s harmonium Reddy moved slowly into place. In the half-light, the narrative was now retold, but expanded to the music and set into motion with dance steps.
Dias joined her. Where Chitrasena’s domain is the air, Nrityagram’s is the earth, with centered placement and steps driving into the floor. When Reddy did a solo later, she planted herself to extend her leg to the side, then did tiny chugs on balance.
Sen was able to get this across both literally and as a metaphor. Dias stayed upright as Reddy went to a kneel and the stage was divided laterally into planes – upper and lower. Like so much of Sen’s work, “Invoking Shiva” flexes a high level of skill without calling attention to it. The two women shadowed one another’s gestures above and below, until they returned to standing side by side. Then Reddy again returned to the floor to meditate at center stage while Dias danced round her.
The women danced a fiery section in unison moving apart and weaving together like a call and response. Dias went to the floor and meditated facing away from us and the piece ended as Reddy pliéd into the same action.
The evening began with an ode to Krishna, “Sankirtanam.” The work, using only the Nrityagram women, started with pure dance, two of them doing a percussive duet, stamping, arm curving almost mechanically or as if they were harvesting. This morphed into a trio, then back to a duo.
Sen’s fluid progression balanced symmetry and asymmetry. Sometimes there were four dancers, at other times five. Then it moved into abhinaya, a word with several connotations, but here meaning narrative phrases. Most classical Indian dance, at least what we get to see in the U.S., believes in the combination of nritta and abhinaya. But it’s usually discrete. You don’t see both at once.
Sen set one or sometimes two dancers doing a narrative phrase against the others, who formed a frame or design. She fractured and divided the narrative among all five women, and abhinaya blurred into nritta. Everyone was at some point Krishna, slaying a monster. That was a narration, but also a design. Sen achieved a fusion of narrative and abstraction, of abhinaya and nritta.
The dance became loose, swaying and more joyous. A procession took four of the women off and left one to bow and close the piece.
New York got a taste of “Poornāratī” last year at Fall for Dance. The work began with the contrast of slow movement to quick bols. This version was slightly revised, if only by casting. Last fall, there were two men in the cast. One less man was not a diminishing; it worked better in Sen’s patterning. The asymmetry of four against three sharpened the stage picture over the even four against four. One time, the asymmetry brought symmetry. At the close of the first part when Reddy was the point of a V and everyone tugged on invisible ropes to bring her forward; the two sides, now of three dancers each, were balanced instead of off-center.
If the two dance groups were used discretely, the vocabulary was largely shared. Everyone did the same deep plié and floating arms, they all affected a carriage that both floated and drove downward. The Chitrasena dancers added a back attitude position and jumping: in place or laterally crossing the stage.
Another example of Sen making content double as design: Four Nrityagram dancers came to a line and all posed, each a different aspect of Krishna. The idea is as old as the legends of his life, and as modern as having multiple people play the same part.
For the brief coda, Fernandez used a striking lowlight as if the ceiling had been dropped. It was such a good effect, it made a similar sidelighting in “Ālāp” look like a watered-down repeat.
The group danced with hand bells, moving into circles, with the Chitrasena dancers doing barrel turns on the outside. They took center stage as the Nrityagram dancers backed out, then they also exited to close. It was an example of another choreographic device that Sen uses consistently that doesn’t find as much use in western composition: the procession. It makes perfect sense in Indian classical dance; it mirrors religious festivals.
Even when Sen leaned into nritta, she felt no need to reject abhinaya. In the middle of the complex virtuosity of “Ālāp” suddenly all three soloists (Abhinaya Rohan, Reddy and Dias) became involved in a dice game.
If you were busy marveling at the dancers, and not marveling at the craft, that may have been what Sen, and her assistant choreographer, Heshma Wignaraja from Chitrasena, wanted. Yet the remarkable fusion of nritta and abhinaya looked unlike almost any other Indian classical company we get to see.
copyright © 2023 by Leigh Witchel
“Āhuti”– Nrityagram Dance Ensemble + Chitrasena Dance Company
The Joyce Theater, New York, NY
May 12, 2023
Cover: Pavithra Reddy of Nrityagram Dance Ensemble and Thaji Dias of Chitrasena Dance Company. Photo © Ravi Shankar.
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