Bharata natyam in the bay area

As I train my student Rebecca for her june bharatanatyam performance, and when I see that there is a ‘performing in the diaspora’ series planned for the future at counterpulse, it seems to me that it might be nice if audiences knew more about the abundance of bharatanatyam here in the bay area.  After all, how can you appreciate a “departure from tradition” if you don’t know the tradition to begin with.  And so, I would like to pass on some of the memorable performances I have seen as well as some of the dancers whose career I follow.

I remember when I first came here from Madras (now called Chennai) in the mid 90s.  When it was December, I really missed not being in Madras, since that’s when the big music and dance festival takes place.  But then someone told me about all the performances here, I only had to lookat the listings in the India Currents magazine and I could see all the student performances of all the teachers.

Sometimes the most famous madras dancers visit here as well.  One time I went to see Alarmel Valli perform in sunnyvale.  A local dance school had organized it.  Another time Malavika Sarukkai, another leading dancer, performed in Berkeley.  Chitra Visweswaran came and performed a mesmerising varnam in fremont one year.  Unfortunately the listings are only a month in advance so you just have to follow the listings each month.

A local sabha, or arts presenter, called South India Fine Arts has been sponsoring visits from today’s leading dancers and musicians in Madras.  Just a few years ago, they brought Priyadarshini Govind who is now one of the established dancers in Madras and she gave a beautifully polished performance at a theater in San Jose and another time they brought Urmila Satyanarayanan who also  has a successful career in Madras and I went to watch her perform at the cubberley theater in palo alto.

Of the dancers who live and teach here, the ones I always watch out for are Vidya Subramaniam, who was trained by Rajaratnam Pillai; Jayanthi Shridharan, who was trained by Adyar Lakshman; and Indumathy Ganesh, who was trained by Chitra Visweswaran.  Their performances are simply superb and beautiful. I especially admire their bhavam, or the dramatic emotive quality which makes everything very poignant.  They generally perform in the south bay but once in a while they come up to the city.

Closer to the city I drive up to San Rafael to see Barbara Framm perform at the Open Secret bookstore.  She was trained in Bharata natyam by the Kunhiramans in Berkeley.  Her adavus are very crisp and she performs padams with a very powerful sense of pathos.

The senior bharata natyam dancers who came here to the Bay Area in the 70s and 80s, some of them have big well known schools, such as Vishal Ramani, who was trained by Mahalingam Pillai, who came here in the 70s, and Mythili Kumar, who was trained by Indira Rajan, who came here in the 80s.  Every year they present their own students, some of whom are really exceptionally gifted and wonderful to watch.

But I’ve heard that the first major dancer to come here was Balasaraswati, a legendary dancer, she came here in the 70s and taught at Mills College for some time.  She went to Wesleyan in the East Coast in Connecticut and lived and taught there for a long time.  Her disciples here include Eva Soltes in SF, Mimi Janislowski in the east bay and Agnes Brenneman who teaches in Berkeley.  Further afield there is Lesandre Ayrey who teaches in Fresno and from the east coast one time I watched a beautiful tanjore quartet varnam called Mamohalahiri performed in Oakland by Kamala Caesar visiting from New York.  Just a few years ago, another dancer from the Balasaraswati lineage, Jaan Freeman came from New York and performed an incredibly wonderful tanjore quartet varnam here in SF in SoMa.  That style has really held onto their choreography which is of a very high quality.