The dancing peacock
By Asha P Nair
26th December 2010 12:01 AM
THIRUVANATHAPURAM: Pali Chandra had long ago lost interest in the dancer in her. For years, she has hogged limelight as a Kathak exponent, carrying the dance form from Kolkata to international stages. But it’s her big asset of students who interests her, keeps her inspired and enthused these days. She is living the role of a Guru in ways few can fathom.
Pali was in the city on a unique mission. She had brought 20 students, from the age of 7 to 30, from Dubai to Delhi, to Kerala to explore the dance forms here. She hopes to evolve a kind of blending in dance between the North and South. Eminent dancers in Mohiniyattam, Bharatanatyam, Koodiyattom and Kathakali including Deepthi Omchery shared their proficiency with the group in the last few days. They say dance is a universal language, but Pali seems to have taken it into her soul.
As a dancer, Pali Chandra had started off at the age of nine. Trained initially in Mohiniyattam and Bharatanatyam, she gradually found her forte in Kathak. But somehow, she did not believe in getting trained all through the life. “I believe the best way to learn something is to do it on the job,” she says. That is why she laid her hands on Flamenco, Ballet, Tap and western contemporary dance.
“I may not be a good Flamenco dancer nor very good in ballet. But that’s not I want to be,” she puts it across clearly. “It’s sharing of skills, of techniques, observing other dance forms and exploring their essence,” she says.
She has performed for the Queen of England, danced her way into the stages in Edinburgh, Luton, Birmingham Dance Exchange, spearheaded several collaborations, lecture demonstrations and seminars. She has delivered her thought-provoking lectures in the Seattle University, Birmingham, Oxford, Liverpool, Bradford, Westminister, Surrey University, Hongkong University, Wellington International school and Royal School in Dubai.
She was a committee member of the ISTD’s (Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing) South Asian Dance Faculty where she contributed to the creation of ISTD’s Kathak syllabus. She is also a graded member of ICCR (Indian Council for Cultural Relations).
While Pali runs a dancing studio in UK in the name of Pali Peacock Productions, she is also the mind and soul of Gurukul established three years back in Dubai. Most of the students who accompanied her to Thiruvananthapuram for the workshop belonged to Gurukul.
For the students, it was a wholesome experience, something they would cherish their entire lives. “Few Gurus will give you the chance to get to know other dance forms also. But Paliji wanted us to know, observe and learn about South Indian dances so that through them we get to read the literature too,” says Mythili Patel, who is 13 years old and who came all the way from Dubai with her mother Shilpa.
The demonstrations and lectures left many of them bewildered and enlightened. “The music, the postures, the mudras of different dances, the moods and ambience they create - we got to explore all this. There are different styles to copy and we could compare it with Kathak and understand its nuances,’’ says Ayushi, from Delhi.
The girls who barely understood what ‘abhinaya’ meant in Mohiniyattam are now interested in reading the literature of those parts which were enacted. Ayushi’s mother Alka, who is also a tabla-player, says the workshop has exposed her daughter and the whole group to dance and its literature and to the language of dance forms in
general.
That the group had their days spent at Vyloppilli Samskrithi Bhavan added to their happiness. “It was like being one with nature and feeling that it was natural to be a dancer,” says Mythili. The group had individual recordings too which was done by Invis Multimedia. “I wanted the girls to experience everything. Facing the camera, the audience, that too a new and different audience...at their age, it’s a great confidence booster,” Pali says.
If not for dance, maybe many of them would not have visited Kerala. But now that they have done, this land, its dances and people have got many endorsers in them. And Pali hopes to return with more students, to tell them in the subtlest way that all dance forms are life’s way of celebrating emotions.
asha.nair@expressbuzz.com
Pali was in the city on a unique mission. She had brought 20 students, from the age of 7 to 30, from Dubai to Delhi, to Kerala to explore the dance forms here. She hopes to evolve a kind of blending in dance between the North and South. Eminent dancers in Mohiniyattam, Bharatanatyam, Koodiyattom and Kathakali including Deepthi Omchery shared their proficiency with the group in the last few days. They say dance is a universal language, but Pali seems to have taken it into her soul.
As a dancer, Pali Chandra had started off at the age of nine. Trained initially in Mohiniyattam and Bharatanatyam, she gradually found her forte in Kathak. But somehow, she did not believe in getting trained all through the life. “I believe the best way to learn something is to do it on the job,” she says. That is why she laid her hands on Flamenco, Ballet, Tap and western contemporary dance.
“I may not be a good Flamenco dancer nor very good in ballet. But that’s not I want to be,” she puts it across clearly. “It’s sharing of skills, of techniques, observing other dance forms and exploring their essence,” she says.
She has performed for the Queen of England, danced her way into the stages in Edinburgh, Luton, Birmingham Dance Exchange, spearheaded several collaborations, lecture demonstrations and seminars. She has delivered her thought-provoking lectures in the Seattle University, Birmingham, Oxford, Liverpool, Bradford, Westminister, Surrey University, Hongkong University, Wellington International school and Royal School in Dubai.
She was a committee member of the ISTD’s (Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing) South Asian Dance Faculty where she contributed to the creation of ISTD’s Kathak syllabus. She is also a graded member of ICCR (Indian Council for Cultural Relations).
While Pali runs a dancing studio in UK in the name of Pali Peacock Productions, she is also the mind and soul of Gurukul established three years back in Dubai. Most of the students who accompanied her to Thiruvananthapuram for the workshop belonged to Gurukul.
For the students, it was a wholesome experience, something they would cherish their entire lives. “Few Gurus will give you the chance to get to know other dance forms also. But Paliji wanted us to know, observe and learn about South Indian dances so that through them we get to read the literature too,” says Mythili Patel, who is 13 years old and who came all the way from Dubai with her mother Shilpa.
The demonstrations and lectures left many of them bewildered and enlightened. “The music, the postures, the mudras of different dances, the moods and ambience they create - we got to explore all this. There are different styles to copy and we could compare it with Kathak and understand its nuances,’’ says Ayushi, from Delhi.
The girls who barely understood what ‘abhinaya’ meant in Mohiniyattam are now interested in reading the literature of those parts which were enacted. Ayushi’s mother Alka, who is also a tabla-player, says the workshop has exposed her daughter and the whole group to dance and its literature and to the language of dance forms in
general.
That the group had their days spent at Vyloppilli Samskrithi Bhavan added to their happiness. “It was like being one with nature and feeling that it was natural to be a dancer,” says Mythili. The group had individual recordings too which was done by Invis Multimedia. “I wanted the girls to experience everything. Facing the camera, the audience, that too a new and different audience...at their age, it’s a great confidence booster,” Pali says.
If not for dance, maybe many of them would not have visited Kerala. But now that they have done, this land, its dances and people have got many endorsers in them. And Pali hopes to return with more students, to tell them in the subtlest way that all dance forms are life’s way of celebrating emotions.
asha.nair@expressbuzz.com
No comments:
Post a Comment