Sharada Srinivasan presents a special dance performance on Monday September 1, 2008 hosted by the Friends of the Kern Institute on the occasion of the international conference on Southeast Asian Archaeology. 

Dr. Sharada Srinivasan is an archaeometallurgist from Bangalore, who has been investigating South Indian metal imagery to establish issues of dating and style. 
But she is also an acclaimed performing artist specializing in the South Indian classical dance of Bharatanatyam. 

For some of the dances that she will perform at the conference, she has drawn inspiration from Tamil devotional poetry directed towards Shiva and Murugan. Other dances refer to the famous Chola images of Shiva as Lord of the Dance, or the resonant 'musical pillars' gracing a well-known temple from the Vijayanagara period at Hampi (Karnataka). During the show, Sharada Srinivasan will support her explanations of the dances by means of a Power Point presentation. 

Venue: The LAK Theatre, Lipsius building, Cleveringaplaats 1, 2311 BD Leiden. 
The program will start at 7.30pm

PROGRAM 
Invocation to the Hindu god Shiva 
As Lord of Dance, based on traditional Natesha Kautuvam. The poem also makes a reference to the traditions of worship through the Deekshitar at the Chidambaram temple.

Amongst the musical pillars of Hampi 
Piece inspired by the sculpture of the 14th century Vittala Temple complex at Hampi. These include the numerous musicians depicted on pillars that are found to have resonant properties.

Excerpt of traditional varnam 'Devadidevar' of the Pandanallur school (with pure dance and expressive dance) 
Slightly reinterpreted by Sharada Srinivasan to touch upon: 
- the 'cosmic' aspects related to the worship of Nataraja, the Lord of Dance evoking the five elements and the five senses; 
- the aspect of 'akasha or space'; 
- the proposed correlation between the iconography of Nataraja and star positions

'Petra Thai'- Expressive dance item (Tamil) 
Poem sung by the renowned singer, the late M S  Subbalaxmi, which tells us that "even if the mother forgets her child, and the artist forgets all skills, the devotee would never forget the Lord who resides within, Shiva."
This poem is interpreted by the dancer's imagination in the light of the saga of the great Chola patron Sembiyan Mahadevi, who became a widow early in life after her husband, the Chola King Gandaraditya, fasted to death as a devotee of Shiva. Also depicts the acts of patronage of the casting of metal images by traditional bronze casters.

Traditional Tillana or pure dance item 
Composed by the well-known musician Lalgudi Jayaraman, and dedicated to the Tamil folk deity Murugan.
 

About the performer 
Dr. Sharada Srinivasan, Fellow of the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, is an expert on interdisciplinary and scientific studies in art, culture and archaeology as well as an acclaimed performing artist of Bharatanatyam. She combines scholarly and artistic perspectives in her approaches. 

She took a PhD in archaeometallurgy from the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, MA from SOAS. London, and B.Tech from Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai. She is a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and recipient of the Indian Institute of Metals Excellence Award, the Malti B. Nagar Ethnoarchaeology Award, the Flinders Petrie Prize and Medal, London University, and the Materials Research Society (USA) Graduate Student Award. 

She has performed and lectured at the Royal Asiatic Society, the Royal Academy of Arts, for the Chola exhibition, the International Academy of Astronautics, the International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, INTACH-Belgium, Nehru Centre, London, China Conservatory of Music, National History of Science Seminar, Hyderabad, University of Toyoma, Japan and others. 

She had a photo-exhibition in June 2008 at Alliance Française Bangalore entitled 'Cosmic Dance of Shiva' on art-science-dance perspectives related to South Indian bronzes and the Nataraja.  

e-mail: sharasri@gmail.com