http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/Male-dancers-find-the-going-tough-in-a-womans-world/articleshow/5237956.cms
http://kutcheribuzz.com/video/NatyanjaliTrust2009/video.htm
NARTAKA DANCE FESTIVAL 2009
Nartaka is a yearly dance festival in Chennai, especially to showcase male Bharatanatyam dancers who have made dance their profession.
Presently, there is considerable increase in the number of male Bharatanatyam dancers which is encouraging. But for most male dancers, who wish to pursue Bharatanatyam as a professional career option, it is without a doubt a challenging career choice.
Dancers have to face a lot of ordeals, in terms of getting opportunities to perform, more so for male dancers aspiring to perform solo. They get few invitations to perform during the high season, or any season for that matter.
For that reason the Natyanjali Trust, Chennai has initiated an all male Bharatanatyam festival to create a platform and encourage passionate young male dancers to showcase their talent.
Every year the festival is inaugurated by presenting a cash award to a eminent Bharatanatyam exponent for his contribution to the field of dance art.
Natyanjali Trust, Chennai is proud that Padmabhusan Alarmel Valli has accepted to inaugurate the festival and that Shri Ramli Ibrahim, Odissi and Bharatanatyam exponent from Malaysia, has graciously accepted to be the recipient of the Nartaka 2009 cash award for his outstanding contribution to classical and contemporary dance forms.
This year Nartaka promises to be a very exciting 3 day festival with 7 accomplished and creative artists of great acumen from Malaysia, USA, France and India who will surely capture the audiences attention and keep them spellbound throughout the performances.
The festival will held at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Mylapore, Chennai
November 18th 2009 at 6:00PM
Award function (Inauguration and felicitation by Padmabhusan Alarmel Valli)
Dance by Shri Ramli Ibrahim
Dance by Shanmuga Sundaran (Disciple of Guru K.J. Sarasa) and L. Narendra Kumar (Disciple of Guru V.P. Dhananjayan & Smt. Shanta Dhananjayan)
November 19th 2009 at 5:45PM
Dance by Shri S. Jayachandran (Disciple of Guru Leela Samson)
Dance by Shri Thang Win from France (Disciple of Prof. C.V. Chandrashekar)
November 20th 2009 at 5:45PM
Dance by Shri Ganesh Vasudeva from U.S.A. (Disciple of Guru Shreelata Suresh)
Dance by Shri Shafeequdeen (Disciple of Guru V.P. Dhananjayan & Smt. Shanta Dhananjayan)
For Further Information: sathirdance@gmail.com
Presently, there is considerable increase in the number of male Bharatanatyam dancers which is encouraging. But for most male dancers, who wish to pursue Bharatanatyam as a professional career option, it is without a doubt a challenging career choice.
Dancers have to face a lot of ordeals, in terms of getting opportunities to perform, more so for male dancers aspiring to perform solo. They get few invitations to perform during the high season, or any season for that matter.
For that reason the Natyanjali Trust, Chennai has initiated an all male Bharatanatyam festival to create a platform and encourage passionate young male dancers to showcase their talent.
Every year the festival is inaugurated by presenting a cash award to a eminent Bharatanatyam exponent for his contribution to the field of dance art.
Natyanjali Trust, Chennai is proud that Padmabhusan Alarmel Valli has accepted to inaugurate the festival and that Shri Ramli Ibrahim, Odissi and Bharatanatyam exponent from Malaysia, has graciously accepted to be the recipient of the Nartaka 2009 cash award for his outstanding contribution to classical and contemporary dance forms.
This year Nartaka promises to be a very exciting 3 day festival with 7 accomplished and creative artists of great acumen from Malaysia, USA, France and India who will surely capture the audiences attention and keep them spellbound throughout the performances.
The festival will held at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Mylapore, Chennai
November 18th 2009 at 6:00PM
Award function (Inauguration and felicitation by Padmabhusan Alarmel Valli)
Dance by Shri Ramli Ibrahim
Dance by Shanmuga Sundaran (Disciple of Guru K.J. Sarasa) and L. Narendra Kumar (Disciple of Guru V.P. Dhananjayan & Smt. Shanta Dhananjayan)
November 19th 2009 at 5:45PM
Dance by Shri S. Jayachandran (Disciple of Guru Leela Samson)
Dance by Shri Thang Win from France (Disciple of Prof. C.V. Chandrashekar)
November 20th 2009 at 5:45PM
Dance by Shri Ganesh Vasudeva from U.S.A. (Disciple of Guru Shreelata Suresh)
Dance by Shri Shafeequdeen (Disciple of Guru V.P. Dhananjayan & Smt. Shanta Dhananjayan)
For Further Information: sathirdance@gmail.com
PANDANAINALLUR HERITAGE
The Pandanainallur style of Bharatanatyam refers to the village where it has originated. Pandanainallur village is a suburb of the city Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu in South India.
The earliest temples in the Thanjavur districts were centers of spirituality through art-science.
In the 19th century the Thanjavur brothers (Thanjavur Quartet), attached to the Thanjavur royal courts, with comprehensible understanding of sampradaya, re-edited and re-designed the temple and royal court practice of ‘Sathir’, transforming it into a presentation for the modern stage. They systematized the existing temple and court dance and re-designed it into the ‘Margam’ (solo dance repertory).
The Thanjavur Quartet dance compositions are lyrical and musical masterpieces, which still form the life force of the present day Bharatanatyam repertory.
The greatest compositions of the Thanjavur Quartet are the varnams, which often contain ‘Vipralambha Sringara Rasa’ (separation of lovers), as well as depictions of being carried away by overwhelming emotions of spiritual bliss, interspersed throughout with abstract dance sequences.
In the beginning of the 20th century ‘Sathir’ was given its present name ‘Bharatanatyam’(Although at the time of Sathir, and even long before that, it was already a custom to refer to sathir as bharathanatyam)
As far as recorded dance history goes the primary Pandanainallur family has been specializing in classical dance and music for over 350 years.
The leading teacher of the Pandanainallur school of Bharatanatyam was the legendary Minakshisundaram Pillai, he was an ancestral nattuvanar descended from the Thanjavur Quartet.
It was Minakshisundaram Pillai who made a standard for the interpretation of the poetic lyrics of the exceptional Thanjavur Quartet music, through abhinaya and commanding exact footwork.
After Minakshisundaram Pillai, his son-in-law Chokkalingam Pillai and his grandson Subbaraya Pillai became the next leading guru’s of the Pandanainallur style of dance.
These highly accomplished dance musicians excelled in creating choreographic designs for Bharatanatyam, with understanding that tradition is ever changing and never static.
The Pandanainallur style of Bharatanatyam, with its hereditary teaching methods, emphasized on the mastery of tempo, precision of dance technique through combined adavu’s and abhinaya or poetry expression through mind and body.
In the Pandanainallur style of teaching, the nattuvanar or dance master always taught his students in the seated position.
If the dance master were himself to dance, to demonstrate and teach the disciple at the same time, his foremost energies in maintaining the prescribed dance lines would be at the cost of the undivided attention on how the student was performing.
The dance master seated in front,of the student,exactly shows what is needed from the student in an adavu or abhinaya demonstration. There was no uniformity in choreography; it was all done on the spot.
Today the non performing nattuvanar is rare and the student copying the performer/teachers movements becomes more of a clone.
Art was only taught and practised traditionally through 'guru mukha' or face to face, each student followed the guru’s instructions in one’s own individual style and did what came naturally to her; hereby creating imaginative dancers.
The contribution to this incomparable art form by those Pandanainallur masters of dance is eminent through the many prominent dancers/teachers they have groomed, now known the world over.
Those masters of art instilled their dance students with not only powerful precise dance techniques but also subtle and elegant understated abhinaya, which is the real beauty of the dynamic, but never static, old Pandanainallur Bharatanatyam.
Excerpts of 'Pandanainallur Bharatanatyam' - lec-dem and text by: Shri Jitinder, Artistic director Sathir Dance Art, Amsterdam/Chennai
The earliest temples in the Thanjavur districts were centers of spirituality through art-science.
In the 19th century the Thanjavur brothers (Thanjavur Quartet), attached to the Thanjavur royal courts, with comprehensible understanding of sampradaya, re-edited and re-designed the temple and royal court practice of ‘Sathir’, transforming it into a presentation for the modern stage. They systematized the existing temple and court dance and re-designed it into the ‘Margam’ (solo dance repertory).
The Thanjavur Quartet dance compositions are lyrical and musical masterpieces, which still form the life force of the present day Bharatanatyam repertory.
The greatest compositions of the Thanjavur Quartet are the varnams, which often contain ‘Vipralambha Sringara Rasa’ (separation of lovers), as well as depictions of being carried away by overwhelming emotions of spiritual bliss, interspersed throughout with abstract dance sequences.
In the beginning of the 20th century ‘Sathir’ was given its present name ‘Bharatanatyam’(Although at the time of Sathir, and even long before that, it was already a custom to refer to sathir as bharathanatyam)
As far as recorded dance history goes the primary Pandanainallur family has been specializing in classical dance and music for over 350 years.
The leading teacher of the Pandanainallur school of Bharatanatyam was the legendary Minakshisundaram Pillai, he was an ancestral nattuvanar descended from the Thanjavur Quartet.
It was Minakshisundaram Pillai who made a standard for the interpretation of the poetic lyrics of the exceptional Thanjavur Quartet music, through abhinaya and commanding exact footwork.
After Minakshisundaram Pillai, his son-in-law Chokkalingam Pillai and his grandson Subbaraya Pillai became the next leading guru’s of the Pandanainallur style of dance.
These highly accomplished dance musicians excelled in creating choreographic designs for Bharatanatyam, with understanding that tradition is ever changing and never static.
The Pandanainallur style of Bharatanatyam, with its hereditary teaching methods, emphasized on the mastery of tempo, precision of dance technique through combined adavu’s and abhinaya or poetry expression through mind and body.
In the Pandanainallur style of teaching, the nattuvanar or dance master always taught his students in the seated position.
If the dance master were himself to dance, to demonstrate and teach the disciple at the same time, his foremost energies in maintaining the prescribed dance lines would be at the cost of the undivided attention on how the student was performing.
The dance master seated in front,of the student,exactly shows what is needed from the student in an adavu or abhinaya demonstration. There was no uniformity in choreography; it was all done on the spot.
Today the non performing nattuvanar is rare and the student copying the performer/teachers movements becomes more of a clone.
Art was only taught and practised traditionally through 'guru mukha' or face to face, each student followed the guru’s instructions in one’s own individual style and did what came naturally to her; hereby creating imaginative dancers.
The contribution to this incomparable art form by those Pandanainallur masters of dance is eminent through the many prominent dancers/teachers they have groomed, now known the world over.
Those masters of art instilled their dance students with not only powerful precise dance techniques but also subtle and elegant understated abhinaya, which is the real beauty of the dynamic, but never static, old Pandanainallur Bharatanatyam.
Excerpts of 'Pandanainallur Bharatanatyam' - lec-dem and text by: Shri Jitinder, Artistic director Sathir Dance Art, Amsterdam/Chennai
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