A ‘Virasat’ of varied colours of Kathak

Bureau Report - Express India - Lucknow,India
Wednesday, September 13, 2006

The land of Kathak would be a witness to the three flavours of dance- contemporary, classic, sufi- coming together, as the Rashtriya Kathak Sansthan’s annual programme, Virasat, would be held on September 22, 23 and 24. The programme would feature the likes of choreographer and contemporary kathak dancer Madhu Natraj Hery matching her skills with traditionalist like Shovana Narain and TV actress and Kathak dancer, Prachee Shah.

Giving details about the programme, the secretary of the Sansthan, Sarita Srivastava, said the programme, for the first time, will bring together three facets of Kathak. ‘‘Traditional kathak has always been favoured by everyone as this dance form, which started from the temples, still gets a lot of patronage. Then, slowly it took on a sufi form and now, it is undergoing a metamorphosis, thanks to the experimentation being done on it. So we would be showcasing all these three forms.”

The three-day function will feature popular TV actress Prachee Shah presenting traditional kathak of the Jaipur gharana. Along with Shah, bureaucrat and dancer Shovana Narain would be presenting the sufi form of kathak. The contemporary form of dance with various other forms fused in would be presented by Madhu Natraj Hery from Bangalore.

The sansthan would also be giving a chance to budding dancers from Lucknow all the three days. While the traditional presentation is being choreographed by Akansha Srivastava and Ishani Agarwal, the sufi dance presentation would be choreographed by Archana Tiwari and Gunjal Dikshit. Gaurav Sharma would be choreographing the contemporary dance piece.