It is a long time since I came back to my blog! There were three triggers why I am back here! One was an invitation to visit an art exhibition of a parent of a danseuse I admire a lot about whom I would write last today! There were merely two pictures of this artist Kuber Dutt in whose memory his daughter and family had put up the art show. The pictures spoke volumes about the man and his life as splendid as resplendent it should have been as his art. But such geniuses rarely stay for long lest they get sullied by the ways of the world. Purva had asked me to come to the exhibition but there were many other worldly things I was caught up which prevented me from going to this exhibition which is going to be a great regret for life because I had to decline something that was offered out of love for something that was created out of love and immortalised for the world. I will try and make amends for it soon. 
The second trigger for the writing is owing to another great miss this week of an extraordinary performance by one of the most admired male exponents of classical dance who refused to go out of line of the tradition and who is upholding the rigour and grammer of dance, Vasudevan. This one artist I would want to watch with my heart's content one of these days with Smitha, my partner in life who herself is a dancer of some standing from the past. Vasudevan I am told brings the subtlety of dance with the strength firmness of the male footwork which should be enthralling experience for sure!
Third and final trigger is of course the beautiful Purva who has captured the imagination of many by her seemingly endless repertoire of expressions and powerful performance where she becomes one with the character she is personifying. Dance, unlike even stage drama, makes the artist change personalities and moods in a moment's notice where the former allows the actor to live the role to its full. Not for the stage actor to change the role from balarama to parasurama, not for him to change from parasakti to a poor mendicant all within the space of flicker of an eye in a dance drama. The expressions of the face and the hand moments of a solo dancer have to spontaneous so as to tell the story and not allow the spectator to wonder whether it is the same person performing the next scene. The whirlwind of moods, the tapping of the feet, the undulating pitch of the lilting music, bright costumes and of course the seamless choreography should transport the audience from their seats to the palaces of dwaraka, the jungles of Mathura, the lofty mountains of Kailash, the idyllic lakes of mansaraovr, the bustling ghats of kasi and of course the pains and pleasures of the divine mother. Has Purva done all of this, only her friends and her audience could tell, I was part of the audience just once. But I can see from the repertoire of pictures that keeps streaming out and screaming her talent, she definitely is already firmly on the path to glory which her father set out to traverse long ago and seemingly now continuing through her!
