|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
LIKE her dance, celebrated dancer Sonal Mansingh, recipient of India’s second highest honour, the Padma Vibhushan, and many other awards like the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award and Kalidas Samman, is timeless. Refusing to age in spirit or belief, the fire in her blazes still. And the dare "I will show you" has not diminished one bit since the time, when resisting pressure from her parents who wanted her to pursue dance as one of the many preoccupations, she decided that dance and dance alone would be her muse.
Time and again, she has charted new frontiers. Redefining dance, tradition and mythology she has even reinvented herself. So, just when she earned a name for herself as India’s leading Bharatnatyam dancer she moved towards Odissi. Proficient in Kuchipudi and Chhau, too, today this disciple of Odissi maestro, the late Kelucharan Mohapatra, is rated as one of the finest Odissi exponent. Without doubt, Bharatnatyam remains her first love. Both forms, which she asserts are like two sisters, are equally exacting. "If Bharanatyam is pure geometry, Odissi with its arduous tribhangi posture," she deems "is fluidity in geometry". In many of her works, she continues to fuse the two and created Dwi-varana, a solo choreography, letting the viewers see the parallel for themselves. "The intrinsic beauty of Indian classical dance" she feels "lies in solo performances". Her biggest worry today is that the solo style may soon become extinct, for, "How many dancers today can hold audiences with a solo performance?" However, she continues to create group choreographies as well, firstly to give a platform to her disciples and also because "isn’t this the buzzword in dancing?" So, before others could say Sonal cannot create ballets, she has unfurled visions that have been truly spectacular. Pure and traditional, often these touch contemporary issues. "Art" she insists, "must flow like water. If we have to appeal to today’s audiences we cannot do so by living in a time warp". Yet she challenges, "No one can say it is not classical". Not even when she created a riveting choreography around Bollywood songs that grew out of a heated argument that Bollywood dances would soon overtake classical. She chuckles, "Imagine I juxtaposed Jaidev’s ashtapadi from Geet Govind with the popular song of yesteryear "mose chhal kiye jaaye". But does Sonal, a name that has almost become synonymous with many an epic character like Draupadi whose temper quite matches hers, identify with them? She says, "Well, these larger-than-life personas do open new doors". Thus, when she was asked to do a piece on Kasturba Gandhi, suddenly the tales she had heard from her mother flashed and a dialogue began. She quips, "These characters have many layers and do speak to you only if you have the curiosity to pay heed and listen to the voice within". Alas, she rues that we rarely value silence and are a voluble nation that has forgotten its own maryaada — the etiquette — and the line between dancer and the Dancer, between naach and nritya. She laments, "We take pride in our rich culture and this is the face we project to the world. But in India, be it television or the other media, classical arts have been relegated to the background". Though she herself has been immortalised in an acclaimed documentary film Sonal made by filmmaker Prakash Jha, she laments the absence of makers who are well versed in the art of making films on classical arts and can capture subtle movements of a dancer. "Dance," she avers, "is all movement and an amalgamation of various rasas". Among the nine rasas, her favourite is Shingaar which ancestors called rasa raja. She elaborates, "Shingaar is love in all its manifestation. The basis of creation is love. God himself is prem swaroop". Any wonder, she attributes sab ka pyaar as the secret of her agelessness. Add to that dogged
determination, an uncanny ability to see things differently and an
acute awareness of her roots, of "who we are?" And Sonal the
enigma and legend is created that never fails to mesmerise. Both in
person and on stage, where her dance speaks as expressively as Sonal
the eloquent speaker.
|
|||
|
|
|||
