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Posted by Janeni on November 13, 2007 at 23:27:33:
In Reply to: thanx posted by mallika on November 13, 2007 at 21:31:28:
The dancer must be really outstanding if she expects someone to drive for 1 hour, buy a ticket, and sit through her 2 hours programme!
In India, fewer rasikas attend live programmes because the traffic gets more and more difficult, the people have to stay till 8 pm at work, the children now have to attend their tuitions (7 days a week) and cannot come for the live programmes.
Close range? Most rasikas can hardly see even where the dancer's legs are and where her hands are. At a festival in Chidambaram you have to watch the dancer 200 metres away, and at large auditoriums you watch the dancer 50 metres away.
Live orchestra? Used to be good 100 years ago, when the voiceless singers did not have to whisper into rusty mikes, and the veena players did not have to rely on prehistoric amplifiers and speakers. Ask your audience how many of them made out the words of your items' lyrics. Nobody understands Tamil, Sanscrit or Telugu poetry today.
Incidentally, however heretical it may sound, I don't even consider Padma Subrahmaniam or Priyadarshini Govind as outstanding dancers. Maybe Priyadarshini used to be excellent before, I don't know. I agree with Anita Ratnam's remarks about Priya's recent performances.
The devadasis used to be content with a very modest (ultra poor, by modern standards) lifestyle. The dancers now have become a bit too greedy. In some cases it goes way beyond ethical limits or decency: to force the poor, undernurished schoolchidren in Chennai to pay Rs.100 as mandatory "donation" for a Bharathnrithyam's prima donna's real estate investment ambitions?
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