Posted by Anita Ratnam on April 14, 2008 at 23:39:42:
In Reply to: Anita Ratnam's letter to City Express posted by Rasika on April 14, 2008 at 10:14:40:
Where do I begin?
1. Sharanya is NOT responsible for the awful title of the article. It is the responsibility, and in this case, the fault of the COPY/PAGE EDITOR of NIE.
2. Sharanya is a young 22 year old trying to cover the arts. She is eager but did not take a single note while talking to me for 20 minutes after the show. That is why the grammatical and factual errors ( about using live music when I specifically stated that I only use commissioned recorded music)
3. The outrageous title does not serve the serious practitioners of art - classical or contemporary. 4.FACES:BLESSED UNREST is the complete title of the work which contains traditional songs like Annapoorne, Ayigir Nandinin, A meera Bhaja, extracts of Aasai Mugam, a Meera bhajan by OS Arun and a ragam alapana by Sikkil Gurucharan. The approach is from modern theatre while the treatment of the traditional well loved compositions are also with poetic prose interspersed.
5. Programme notes, choreographer, director, dramaturg and composer notes were also provided in the press kit.
6. Writers are helpless after they submit the copy to the page editor. They can only hope that their work will not be manipulated or twisted. In this case, the article was not too bad, although it did not say anything except some bland generalisations. It was the TITLE of the piece that reflects an endemic malaise that permeates all arts reporting and coverage.
7. NIE published my letter on Monday April 10. Since then i have received more than 30 sms messages and phone calls from senior dancers congratulating me on the response. Even the staff of THE HINDU and DECCAN CHRONICLE telephoned me.
8. Should I react so strongly? Why not? Why should I remain silent and just complain? Does this make me sound shirll and angry? So what? What does one achieve by remaining submissive.
9. Thanks for the response
My fiercest critics are the men.. expectedly
Anita R Ratnam
Anita-ji, I'm not sure I understand what you are angry about. If it is about the title, I can maybe see your point about it being an afront to you since your work has never been about disrespecting Bharatanatyam. But, how is the title an afront to Bharatanatyam itself? The review itself seems inoffensive and very complimentary. It would be very helpful for you to lay out exactly what it was in the review that created such a strong reaction from you.