Alarmel Valli, “Kavya Tarangini”

Alarmel Valli, Bharatanatyam performance, “Kavya Tarangini”

Page Theater, Duke University

Durham, North Carolina

November 2, 2012

I had watched “Lasya Kavya” over a number of times. But her DVD had not prepared me for Alarmel Valli’s performance yesterday, Friday, at Duke University’s Page Auditorium.

I knew I was going to watch a great dancer, but I was not prepared for how much I would love her performance. For how deeply it would move me. For how much joy and pleasure it would give. There are those days, the sort the Romans would have marked with a white stone, the day that tells you something about the world. Something subtle, something beautiful. That day you have lived. There aren’t too many of those when all is said and done. But that’s the sort of day yesterday was.

She is magnificent! One sees her become people and things onstage. And thoughts and feelings as well. We can feel the rain, the lightening, the thunder. We see a regal peacock dance. We see the water ripple and flow. We see the girl who falls in love, her affections unrequited, her beauty wasting, in poetry that goes back a couple of millennia. Then we see her determined to win her lover by fair means or foul; and succeed.

There is great power in her movement. And there is precision and poetry as well. There is the physicality of it, and there is the intellect. And there is spirituality as well, whatever that might be. Even a prosaic fellow like me can see and feel and understand that sort of spirituality: the apprehension of an order higher than the mundane. She weaves it all together, and no seams show. Dance is above all I would say about the extraordinary beauty of the human form. But it is more than that. And to feel what more there is to it you have to go see a performance like this.

Even before she begins to dance she binds you with her words. Alarmel’s voice is not an ordinary voice. It is one one can listen to forever. Her voice too is dance. Her words embroider her thoughts and lead you almost breathless to an anticipation of what she will show. And by the time you are done listening to her you are like a fly trapped in spider’s silk. If I could not see her for some reason, I would still be content just listening. More than content, entranced.

Don’t miss her if you get half a chance. What is a life worth if you haven’t seen her dance. Alarmel is the embodiment of all that is flawless, beautiful, eternal about India. She is an artist beyond excellence. (Written to my facebook page, November 2012) -------------------- May I close with this clip. Ein Lall’s movie on a thillana danced by Alarmel Valli. What a thrilling performance this is! Alarmel is like a bird, a butterfly, a poem! She is beautiful! And she seems to inhabit a different space all her own. Not this ordinary space the rest of us exist in.

Ein Lall’s treatment of her subject is as poetic as Valli’s dance. I love especially how she shows Valli in silhouette at length, shorn of detail, bereft of distraction, just the purest of pure dance. Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxhmA4rQ5IU