‘Dancing to Her own Tune’ by Kavya Ganesh is a modern take on the ‘Bharatanatyam’

There definitely is a lot from personal experience that I have poured into this piece, but the larger idea came, not from one particular incident as such, but from a general understanding of how self-assured women really are in this day and age. I wanted to bring a nayika into the varnam who my girlfriends today can look at and say, “Hey, I get her...”

The crux of this piece follows a girl who is hit with the realisation of just how much she has been putting up with in her relationship, and how much she has been devaluing herself in pursuit of her man. She goes on to say that it’s time for her to dance to her own tune. I wrote the script outline in English and got it interpreted/translated by a multi-talented artist, Surya Sriram. The entire piece is an original composition.

The interactive elements are a lot to do with how the piece is structured. Firstly, there is interaction between the musical collaborators and myself, the dancer. You will see them be a part of the storytelling as opposed to simply playing the role of a supporting orchestra seated on the side. Secondly, we have incorporated some theatre elements and a lot of the emotive portions has a touch of mime to it. This involves a back and forth with the audience, as though directly conveying the story to them.

Tradition as a concept, according to me, is extremely fluid. Through time immemorial, dance forms keep evolving and the definition of what is considered ‘traditional’ changes with the times. Like any art form, Bharatanatyam has immense scope to portray a variety of themes and several dancers today are exploring new concepts that are relevant to our times. So the vocabulary holds enough space for the old and the new.

I was not apprehensive about exploring this because actually this nayika is not alien to our literature canon. Several of our pieces called padams and javalis have these nayikas who are feisty, independent and absolutely no-nonsense in their demeanour. These women characters are already living in the form, I am simply taking her and making her metaphors and references a little more accessible to my generation.

I started learning dance at the age of six, and I train under leading dancer, Rama Vaidyanathan. I have always dreamed big and hope to create a global style rooted in Indian aesthetic which brings dance, theatre, and literature together. One of my main missions is to expand the reach of Bharatanatyam by creating relatable work while being rooted in the vocabulary of the form. I have performed in India and abroad doing both solo and ensemble work at venues including the NMACC Mumbai, Esplanade Singapore, Ailey Theatre NYC, SWEAT Festival Hong Kong and so on. I have also completed the Yale Conservatory for Actors Programme in 2022 and have worked with the world-renowned international choreographer, Akram Khan.

I do think it is the need of the hour. Not to say that the traditional and older pieces must be discarded, absolutely not. I love practicing the traditional varnams and feel deeply empowered in a very different way when I perform those. But I do think, exploring such new themes would make the dance form much more accessible at a contextual level.

All of us dancers and dance rasikas might feel and understand the symbolic and spiritual depths beneath a varnam where a nayika is pining for her lord. But for a layman, like my friends from school and college, to see a girl constantly pining over a man, it is unrelatable today. Hopefully, such re-imaginations help bring newer audiences into the fold and allow the form to grow in different ways.