Dancer Aranyani Bhargav’s latest production moves away from a conventional bharatanatyam performance

You say you want to bathe when the waves subside. Is there an end to the endless mind? These are a couple of lines from Telugu poet Annamacharya’s 15th century metaphysical poem Kadalupidi Neeradaga. Aranyani Bhargav, dancer, choreographer and the artistic director of Vyuti Dance Company along with five other dancers present The Endless Mind, 50-minute work that narrates the poem through abstraction within bharatanatyam. Aranyani is the choreographer and director of the performance and she will be joined by dancers Akshata Joshi, Gayatri Shetty, Rohee Uberoi, Ronita Mookerji and Seher Noor Mehra. The performance is produced by BNP Paribas and G5A Forum. We speak to Aranyani to know more about the performance, her upcoming projects and lots more…

“The performance is an abstract exploration through bharatanatyam as well as music composed by Fragment of Light that we have used. We have interpreted a 15th century poem by the poet Annamacharya who wrote this poem in a temple at Tirupati. The poems are divided into two categories — Sringara, which is love poetry and the other have been categorised as metaphysical poems. Kadal Udupi is one of the latter, and are deeply introspective, dealing with questions that are relevant even today.” Aranyani begins.

When asked about the reason she chose to work on this particular poem, the dancer says, “I came across the poem in the book titled God on the Hill by Annamayya which was translated by Velcheru Narayana Rao and David Shulman. I came across this book in 2008 and as I was going through the book, the metaphysical poems really spoke to me. To my knowledge, these adhyatma (metaphysical) poems have never been danced to, at least in living memory. But they were written to be danced to, according to Prof Shulman! So that is quite interesting. Though the poem was written in the 15th century, the questions that it poses are still very much relevant today. I have been working on the piece around the poem for some time and am quite happy with how the work has turned out.”

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The choreography is exploratory, and arguably uncoventional. The same, could be said for the music by Fragment of Light. It is very different to what you would normally expect at a bharatanatyam performance. There are no vocals, no mridangam, no flute or violin accompanying the vocals. The music has been inspired by minimalism and experiments in drone music.

"After Bengaluru’s show this weekend, the performance is taking place in Chennai on August 19. Both these performances are supported by the Prakriti Foundation. We hope to bring this work to you other cities in India too!”, Aranyani concludes.

Entry free. July 7, 7 pm. At BIC, Domlur. 

Email: alwin@newindianexpress.com
Twitter: @al_ben_so