Mohiniyattam danseuse Gayathri Madhusudan
| Picture Credit score: Anil Ayyur
Raja Ravi Varma’s traces, of artwork and of verse, captivated Mohiniyattam danseuse Gayathri Madhusudan ever since she occurred to see Vinod Mankara’s documentary on the artist, When the Brush Dropped, about six years in the past. As a lot as she was enchanted by the poetry within the work, she realised that the artist was additionally a poet who had written verses in Malayalam, Sanskrit and Manipravalam.
Not too long ago, the Kozhikode-based dancer premiered ‘Hiranmayam’, a one-hour recital based mostly on the verses penned by the royal artist. After the premiere at Bharat Bhavan in Thiruvananthapuram, she additionally carried out ‘Hiranmayam’ at a programme organised to watch the 175th beginning anniversary of Raja Ravi Varma at Kilimanoor Palace, about 35 kilometres from Thiruvananthapuram.
Mohiniyattam danseuse Gayathri Madhusudan
| Picture Credit score:
Anil Ayyur
Gayatri says that though she doesn’t paint or draw, she had at all times been drawn in the direction of the work of the good artist. “The realisation that he was additionally a poet impressed me to learn and examine the literary works of the artist and the writings on him. It was a quest to know the artist and poet,” she says.
Gayathri managed to search out a few of his verses in three languages, in numerous books on the artist. After choosing the verses, she gave them to musician Nelamperoor Suresh Kumar, head of the Division of Music at St Teresa’s School, Ernakulam. He not solely scored the music and set the songs to ragas corresponding to Nattakurunji and Chenjurutti but additionally sang the verses within the Sopanam model.
“Of the 4 items in my recital, three are based mostly on the artist’s verses. The primary one is a cholkettu based mostly on a stuti (devotional verse), ‘Shashishekhara Stuti’. I selected from many such verses written by Ravi Varma and set it to the motion sample of Mohiniyattam,” she explains.
The second, the principle piece in her recital, is ‘Manasa Yatra’, a form of travelogue. Ravi Varma loved travelling and had the behavior of sketching the locations and the individuals he noticed there. He additionally wrote small verses in Sanskrit concerning the locations he had been to.
“Manasa Yatra’ is about a spot he couldn’t go to. Apparently, he longed to journey to Manasarovar within the Himalayas, however was not in a position to go there. As an alternative, he wrote a poem from his creativeness of how it might be if he had been to go there – the route, the scenic panorama, the individuals and his experinces there. There are 4 or 5 stanzas on it that I choreographed,” says Gayathri.
Gayathri Madhusudan
| Picture Credit score:
Particular Association
The third one is ‘Kiratha Parvathi Sthavam’, based mostly on a well-known portray by the artist that reveals Shiva and Parvathy disguised as forest dwellers. Throughout her analysis, Gayathri discovered that the artist was within the behavior of writing crisp verses as captions for his work. She provides that a lot of the main points about his habits, skilled commitments and journey had been gleaned from a e book on the journal maintained by C Raja Rava Varma, Ravi Varma’s youthful brother and disciple.
“After portray ‘Kiratha Parvathi’, Ravi Varma steps again and asks the portray if Parvathi favored the portray and his depiction. He asks if the costume happy Parvathi and says how a lot he longed to know if he had portrayed the scene nicely. It’s an evocative verse,” says the dancer.
The final merchandise in her recital is an elegy written by Subramania Bharati on the demise of Ravi Varma. As an alternative of lamenting the lack of the eminent artist, Bharati writes that after portray stunning scenes of celestial beings and the heavens, the artist himself had gone to heaven to examine if his work had finished justice to them. Bharati goes on to say that even the heavens wouldn’t be capable of stay as much as the alluring footage he had painted. “Two traces of the verse are simply out there on the Internet. I sought the assistance of a buddy in Tamil Nadu to get the complete poem. She discovered it in a buddy’s private library and despatched me a replica. I bought it translated after which choreographed as a mangalam, the piece that’s carried out on the finish of a recital,” she says.