Balancing Act

For Ratnam’s performance, columnist and poet Malavika Sangghvi will read out poems on motherhood by writers from Hawaii, Jamaica, Nigeria and India. “One of the poems is by a Caribbean poet Lorna Goodison, titled I am becoming my mother. It talks about how many of us say we don’t want to become like our mothers, but eventually end up like them,” she says. Her own poem, titled Heirloom, is about a 70-year-old silk sari handed down to her by her mother, and will feature in the dance performance. Another interesting piece will have a rudaali from Rajasthan sing a Tamil lullaby.

With a career that spans over four decades, she has done over a 1,000 performances in 25 countries. Coming from an illustrious Brahmin family of doctors, diplomats, priests and entrepreneurs, Ratnam is a first generation artiste. After a formal training in Bharatanatyam that started at the age of three, Ratnam studied literature and acquired a post-graduate diploma in dance from Rukmini Devi Arundale’s Kalakshetra in Chennai.

While she was at the school, Ratnam was drawn to theatrical elements in other forms of dance, such as kathakali and mohiniattam. To enhance expressions through body movements, she then trained in martial arts technique such as Kalarippayattu and T’ai chi. Around 1998, Ratnam created her own unique contemporary style of dancing and termed it “Neo Bharatam”, a form influenced by theatre. This name was inspired by the Hollywood film Matrix. “Like Keanu Reeves’ character Neo, I wanted to stimulate and provoke people to question the things around them,” she says. A more fluid form of dancing, Neo Bharatam requires body movements to be more articulate with endless improvisations.

Although a seasoned performer, Ratnam admits she often finds it difficult to strike a balance between her roles as a mother and a performer, as would be true for any working mother. “Motherhood demands a lot. I have been a single parent for the last 25 years and my children were raised by their grandmother, just as I was raised by my grandmother,” she says. After her first marriage fell apart, Ratnam moved to New York and had a successful stint as a TV producer and anchor for a local network.

In 1990, Ratnam returned to her roots with a new outlook towards dance. “I didn’t want to be a typical classical dancer and didn’t want to dress like them in such finery,” she says. Ratnam’s performances are a cohesive mix of dance, music, theatre and design. For Circles of Love, she will be collaborating with musicians such as Anil Srinivasan, Viji Krishnan and Vedanth Bharadwaj who will experiment with instruments such as guitars and didgeridoos among others.

“Bombay is an interesting city and the audience is open to experiments. People who come to watch a performance really mean to be present there,” says Ratnam, who plans to take this production to smaller and more intimate venues. Circles of Love will be performed on Saturday at The Experimental Theatre, NCPA.

meenakshi.iyer@expressindia.com