Valli presents a unique combination

``DUE TO the political rally in the stress of Chennai, the programme is beginning late, please bear with us'', the announcer said. The violin duo performance by G.J.R. Krishnan and Vijayalakshmi started late and hence Alarmel Valli's dance recital also started late. But the audience wanted Valli's full programme without any pruning and stayed till late in the night.

Alarmel Valli gave the performance that original and distinctive flavour, finding her own, unique way of combining the old and the new, tradition and innovation. The irrepressible force of her dance with concrete imagery, seems to have become Alarmel Valli's trade mark.

From the very beginning Valli amazed her audience with her rare combination of pure and beautiful lyrical line with unusual expressiveness and imperious dynamism. It is this combination that makes her so unique. In her nritta portions she attains a fluidity and imbues the dance with an extreme, fantastic dynamism. She combines contrasts boldly and imaginatively acquiring her own unique and distinctive harmony of line and form. There is a melodious quality to her pure dance in the most acute and unexpected dissonances. There may have been students of Bharatanatyam in the audience who wondered about the eye not following the hand, the hand not reaching far behind in the tai di di tai adavus and the embarrassing movements of her lips and face in the Korvais. But her line is the fluidity. She magnifies the effect of an adavu, forces and condenses everything, and is not afraid of being overwhelming, embarrassing or perplexing. She disarms with remarkable ease the sticklers for rules and canons, her energy and passion invariably drawing delighted applause from the audience.

Alarmel Valli began her performance with ``Shankara Srigiri'' of Swati Tirunal preceded by the sloka ``Angikam Bhuvanam''... and went on straight to the Kapi raga Pada Varnam of the Thanjavur Quartet. The Varnam, ``Sarasanalu'' in Telugu had interesting nritta combinations and tattimettu adavus for half an avartanam cycle and moving around and running in a theermanam sequence.

Valli took up two sequences from the Sangam poems for Abhinaya delineation. They were both delightful. The song of the tree from ``Natrinai'' is an unusual one where a girl, seeing her friend in dalliance with her lover, advises her to move to the shade of another tree since this was a tree that had grown from a seed pressed to the earth by the two of them while they were playing as children. It had sprouted on its own and the two girls had tended to it with milk and ghee. Their mother had told them that the tree was their sister and more precious than them. How can you be with your lover in the presence of your sister, asks her friend and leads them on to the shade of some other tree. A delightful abhinaya piece indeed.

Valli then took up three small poems from ``Kurunthogai'' to show love, dissolution and rejection as the three phases of a woman's mind. In the first, the woman is angry with the trees which have sprouted flowers and scolds them for being so much in haste. Her lover had promised her that he would be back at the break of monsoon when the trees would flower. She scolds the trees for mistaking the passing showers for the monsoon and blooming. But realising that he indeed has let her down, she laments in loneliness in the great rain, lying awake and listening to the sounds of the little bell in the neck of the cow that is swishing its tail to drive away a fly.

The faint tinkle of the bell heightens her loneliness. In the third poem she becomes bold and says if he can stay wherever he is without thinking of me, I can too. I will not go and pray in the Devi temple and tie a yellow thread on my wrist nor will I go and seek palm reading to find out when he will come. I will reject him too, she says. Valli infused passion being gentle and tough at the same time with inspired imagination weaving lace like imagery of the passion and loneliness and making it all very vivid. Fragile strength, resilient energy and sparkling brilliance marked Alarmel Valli's dance.

V.R. DEVIKA

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