Frozen postures and dynamic movements

LEGACY OF A LEGEND - A collection of articles: Dr. Padma Subrahmanyam; Compiled and published by Nrithyodaya, the Academy of Performing Arts, 1/71, Laxmi Niwas, Road No. 25, Sion (West), Mumbai-400022. Price not indicated.

PADMA SUBRAHMANYAM is primarily a dancer of great merit and daring but over the decades she has been expanding her horizon and has emerged as a formidable research scholar, choreographer, author and indologist.

She literally grew up in a world full of music, dance and poetry. Her family background was highly conducive to her all-round development. Her father was K. Subrahmanyam, film director and freedom fighter and her mother, Meenakshi Ammal, a composer and versatile instrumentalist.

A disciple of Vazhuvur Ramayya Pillai, Dandayudhapani Pillai and Mylapore Gauri Ammal, Padma arrived as a complete dancer on the Bharatanatyam scene in the 1960s. But a spirit of adventure prompted her to do research on the Natya Sastra, particularly its Karana aspect. She conducted her study under the guidance of T.N. Ramachandran, the doyen among archaeologists and her thesis ``Karanas in Indian Dance and Sculpture'' secured a Ph.D. for her from the Annamalai University.

Her creative urge to incorporate the frozen dance postures of sculptures into dynamic movements in her choreography, however, drew flak from several quarters although genuine scholars hailed her as a bold innovator.

As an author, she has four books to her credit: Bharata's Art Then and Now, Bharatakkalai Kotpadu (Tamil), Natya Sastra and National Unity and Kanchi Mahaswami's Vision of Asian Culture. It is well-known that Padma has been the recipient of infinite grace from the Paramacharya of Kanchi and the greatest moment in her life came when the sage commanded her to redesign the 108 Karanas and fix them as sculptures in the Uttara Chidambaram Nataraja Mandir at Satara (Maharashtra). She completed the work and had the sculptures installed on the walls of the Satara temple. When she later visited the Prambanan Siva Temple in Central Java, she discovered a set of Karana sculptures there and was amazed to see that they corresponded with her own redesigned Karanas.

The volume under notice has been published by her students and admirers to commemorate her unique contribution to dance and indology. It contains nine articles by Padma herself, including addresses, besides tributes by admirers and disciples. There is a separate article by Kausalya Santhanam on late Syamala Balakrishnan, Padma's sister-in-law and accompanyist for 35 years. In her articles Padma writes with conviction, backed by an in-depth study of the subject dealt with. The first article, ``Bliss of awareness - a manifestation'' is, naturally, on the late Paramacharya of Kanchi who was her guiding star at every stage of her life. The article, ``Siva the Eternal Dancer'' concludes that the icon of Nataraja represents the synthesis of religion, dance, art, science and metaphysics. Solid research has gone into the article, ``The Temple as the focal centre of dance art''. The timelessness of Bharatanatyam and the Satara Karanas are discussed in the next two articles. The analysis of time, space and source for the historiography of the arts of music and dance, with interesting charts, will be an eye-opener to many readers.

We see a different facet of Padma in her valedictory address at the Bhagavad Gita camp at Trichur (December 1999) from which we find that she is an earnest student of the ``Song celestial''. Equally interesting is her article ``Arts - intangible source and tangible course'' which deals with the concept of Sabda Brahman.

Among articles paying tributes to her, the most illuminating is the one entitled ``Dedicated dancer, researcher'' by the Bharatanatyam exponent, Lakshmi Viswanathan. The writer has summed up Padma's achievements and concludes that the secret behind her accomplishments has been ``dance and more dance''.The sumptuous volume has been printed on art paper and contains colour photographs of archival value. A few spelling mistakes are found here and there, particularly in the Sanskrit words.

T. S. PARTHASARATHY

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