Dancing Deity

She is the personification of traits that ornate a dancer8217;s persona. Elegance, sensitivity, grace and talent are just a few adjectives that can be attributed to her.

Kathak exponent Shovana Narayan enthralled Puneites this Saturday when she performed on the festival8217;s theme Indradhanush

She is the personification of traits that ornate a dancer8217;s persona. Elegance, sensitivity, grace and talent are just a few adjectives that can be attributed to her. Shovana Narayan, a dancer par excellence and a virtuoso with inner strength and determination shares, 8220;It is dance that makes me feel younger by every passing day. It is not only the dedication towards it but also my devotion that interconnects with dance enlightening me.8221; Narayan was in the city to perform in the Pune festival on the theme of Indradhanush, this Saturday.

8220;Indradhanush is the celebration of plurality; it8217;s an illustration of faith that exist in our society. While each religion has its own customs and traditions, the moral that they disseminate is the same,8221; says Narayan, who started her performance with the praise of elements of the world. Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Islam, Sikhism and Christianity were the faiths that she depicted in Indradhanush. Truth, violence, struggle, dominance, elevation of self were the subjects of her dance. Her style represents a crystallisation of techniques and elegance.

8220;We must understand the physicality and techniques of the dance while performing before the audience. Pune Festival has been a fantastic trip for me. As there are programmes going on at three different venues, it reminded me of the days when such festivals were celebrated in Patna, Allahabad and also Mumbai. Earlier I have performed at concerts like Sawai Gandharwa in Pune, but I feel that there it8217;s only the connoisseurs which is your audience, but Pune Festival caters to all,8221; says Narayan while speaking about her experience at Pune Festival.

She is one of the celebrated disciples of the maestro, Late Pandit Birju Maharaj. 8220;It is the almighty and the inner strength that keeps me going. One must put in an individualistic attitude to the dance form, it bring new pictures to the mind,8221; feels Narayan, who has performed on national and international platform and mesmerised the viewers for more than three decades, She has not only connoted depth into this form of expression but has re-defined and enriched the ethos of Kathak, which has endowed her with a strangely brilliant luminosity.