Dear Friends,
Karuna Sagari gave a memorable and evocative evening during her performance at Sutra’s Amphi-Theatre that left her audience reeling with the ‘lightness of being’. Karuna’s Nunmai was the kind of experience which reminded us that bharatanatyam was originally meant as a solo vehicle where the dancer is storyteller who is able to take us into another heightened reality merely by the power of suggestion.
As such, the dancer/actor has to be the consummate artist, who in turn, has to perform for an informed and sensitive rasikas who would be able to receive the subtle nuances of the ‘rasa’ generated by the artist.
In her performance of Nunmai: Where small things matter, both dancer and rasikas were in resonance and in-sync.
The universe, too, seemed to corroborate gifting that special experience of excellent weather, whereby Karuna was able to give a full program outside in the sylvan Sutra Amphi-Sutra garden. The heightened aesthetic and immersive experience left many of us at the edge of our seats.
Karuna’s Nunmai also gave us a glimpse of the super sophisticated world of the Sangam era where the subtle, refined and civilised sensibility seemed to be the order. Karuna’s theme ‘where small things matters’ came through with great poignancy in sheer contrast to the crassness of present day aesthetics where audience must be ‘entertained with bigger and better’ circus acts.
Karuna’s authenticity came through with the sincerity of her innovative contributions to the ‘new’ movements she rendered in communicating her subtle depictions of both the inner and outer landscapes of her subject. She had complete trust in her self – that whatever she composed would emerge organically within the bharatanatyam tradition. As such, nothing was jarred.
Karuna, like the late Rukmini Devi, the founder of Kalakshetra, her Alma Mater, is a creative modernist who functions within the tradition of bharatanatyam.
Karuna not only paid homage to Kalakshetra in her speech but credited her evolution to her grandmother, Smt Swarna Somasundaram for instilling in her the love for Tamil bhakti literature and poetry of the Sangam era. Karuna also mentioned her guru Sheejith Krishna and her present mentor, the great bharatanatyam dancer Malavika Sarukkai as those who had inspired her.
Sutra