Sreelakmy Govardhanan: Mandookashabdam and Pootna Vadh

I share one of my favorite dance clips today. This is a clip of Kuchipudi dances by Sreelakshmy Govardhanan. It is made up of excerpts from six different pieces from one single evening of performance.

The following description of this clip I wrote when I first shared the clip back in February 2020 in this group.

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Sreelakshmy opens with a Ganapati Vandana. The exuberance of Kuchipudi is in full flower here. Kuchipudi sometimes appears unrestrained, unbridled, extravagant, impudent. That is in fact a big part of the appeal of Kuchipudi. This is the piece to see the beauty of Kuchipudi in the wild. Watch the Ganapathi dance with abandon.

There are subtle undertones for sure. Muted, but exquisite when they show, like vestigial lightning in a dark and roiling sky. Like small but priceless ornaments. We see these subtle aspects play out in Sree’s glance, in her brow, in the barely perceptible tilt of her head, in the slightest shifts in the muscles of her face. She manifests both the vigor and the subtlety of Kuchipudi in full measure.

Next comes an excerpt from a spectacular Mandodari Shabdam. This is a tour de force of abhinaya. Mandodari Shabdam, aka Mandooka Shabdam, is the story of a frog (Sanskrit: mandooka) who turned into a woman of dazzling beauty. The music in this piece is very Kuchipudi: it will remind you immediately of Bhamakalpam.

There are multiple alleles of the story of how Ravana, enamored of Parvati’s beauty, unheedful of the sort of restraint one might expect of a reasonable person, his concupiscence inflamed, asks Shiva to gift Parvati to him.

Since Shiva had promised Ravana whatever he would ask and, who knows, unmindful perhaps of what was being asked of him, tuned out in some haze of narcotics perhaps, Shiva said: “Take her!”

Parvati, alarmed, fashioned a woman from a frog: a woman she created in her own image. She made this woman for Ravana to carry off. And that is how Mandodari came to be Ravana’s queen.

In Sree’s telling, she dances how the frog sees her reflection in a pool, how turning into Mandodari she discovers all at once, to her delight, her new face, her supple limbs, her lustrous hair. It is a revelation, her dance. I can feel Mandodari’s becoming in every pore of my body when I see Sree dance it.

Her Mandookashabdam episode begins actually with Sree dancing a salutation to Sri Krishna Deva Raya, the King of the Vijayanagara Empire, 16th century CE. The composition itself is older. The Mandookashabdam she dances was composed, the poetry and the music, by Jayappa Nayak in 13th century CE, if I am not mistaken.

The story goes that the prefatory obeisance to Krishna Deva Raya was added by the king’s favorite dancer who would dance the piece for him. That prefatory obeisance has since become an integral part of Mandookashabdam, or Mandodarishabdam. I have seen it danced also by Indrani Rahman, in a clip from way back when. Although Indrani Rahman’s Mandodarishabdam is completely different from Sree's. Indrani's son, Ram Rahman, was a year senior to me at the Modern School in Delhi. He was a wonderful gymnast. I still see him in my head working out on the pommel horse.

It’s very interesting that we see Sree dance a Muslim salaam in this obeisance, which tells us that certain customs of Muslim royalty from up north had found their way also into Vijayanagara court etiquette!

Next, Sree dances a raas, ending with the beginning of Krishna’s vastra-haran episode.

Next Sree dances a piece that starts out as nritta, pure dance, but evolves later into a story that I will need help figuring out with help from someone who knows Telugu.

In the penultimate piece, even more magnificent perhaps than her Mandookashabdam, Sree dances another tour de force of abhinaya, Pootna Vadh. I could never have imagined that Pootna Vadh could be so engrossing.

Sree’s Pootna runs through an entire gamut of emotions. Pootna begins, it seems, almost with a fondness for the beautiful baby she is about to nurse. We see a love of maternal magnitude in Sree’s Pootna. I have never before seen Pootna danced thusly.

But yes I can imagine that even though her ultimate purpose was vile, that she might in the beginning have fallen completely under the spell of the baby Krishna.

Once she begins nursing him, Pootna gradually begins to feel first a lassitude, then a discomfort. Panic sets in as she realizes that this is no ordinary baby, that this will not end well for her. Her panic makes her revert for a moment to her rakshasa-swaroop --- which is to me the most amazing part of Sree’s dance. It makes the hair on my neck stand up. It is chilling. It makes me cold to see this monster emerge from a kindly-looking woman (in Pootna’s disguise), a mother, a nurse, holding a child, suckling him, admiring his beauty and his growing satiety, rejoicing in the fragrance that rises from a newborn.

This is the most amazing, the most beautiful part of the clip, entirely on par with Sree’s Mandodari Shabdam. It is a performance you will feel in your bones. In your marrow.

Last of all, once again, Sree dances to Krishna, this time to a baby Krishna.

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Well, enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UL9fty5DmBc