Arangetrams.

Posted by Ambika Sridhar (203.41.64.105) on November 20, 2006 at 20:09:25:

In Reply to: The Arangetram Question posted by Rachel on November 20, 2006 at 09:46:47:

Hi,

I am very happy to know that an awareness that wheather Arangetram is needed or not being discussed on a platform like this.

Well I had a training of Bharatanatyam in a university where I did my masters in Bharatanatam, and post graduate diplome in Nattuvangam. Like any other degree, we had term exams, annual exams and at the end of final year of degree, we had 2 hours performance in front of lecturers, professors, students and our personal guests. A well critical applauded performance in front of 200 people. Still in my days, many of my fellow students from rich families did their arangetrams in commercial venues.The HOD who was well paid by UGC salary grades happily did their arangetrams.

Arangetram was a tradition during devadasi days, where the girls took their training in dance for several years, her arangetram was organised, for the society to know that a dancer is ready, before that they were neither presented in front of anyone nor they were declared as proficient in dancing.

I donot know whom to blame for popularising this tradition. Parents are in rat race to win over each other as who does the most expensive arangetram. The teachers demand all sort of expectations. The student think as a completion of their dance training, the day they perform arangetram. I have seen more than 100 brochures of arangetrams where student do say, "this is milestone of my career as a dancer, it the begining of my dance journey etc etc" and in reality that will be her last performance.

The private dance classes does not have the exam formats hence they can be compared with Guru-kula system, but now a days all the private classes can get affiliation to some incorporated performing arts government body who can conduct exams and judge the capacity of the dancer. An arangetram is not a solution of the completion of the training where the girls has already performed 100 times small items on the stage.

Now a days the arangetrams are more like a fashion parade where the girl has to wear 4-5 costumes in a performance. Due to this the 2 hours arangetram gets prolonged to 4 hours, the bored audience is kept busy by solo performance of the orchestra artists such as voilist, or singer. One really has to think whose arangetram is this, the dancers or the orchestras? this kind of arangetrams can uphold audience interest only upto first two items than all look boring. Do we really need such arangetrams ? Certainly not.

Our lalit Kala acadamy, state gove cultural bodies should take this issue seriously and form some kind of legislation to this practice of expensive practices and making it look like a compulsory. .