Bharatnatyam Exponent

Dance is her Destiny

Malavika Sarukkai shares her thoughts about her art and life in a chitchat with Nirupama Dutt

SHE is acclaimed as the most accomplished Bharatanatyam exponent today who has polished her art to such an extent that it is a spontaneous overflow from her being. Reviewing her performance at the Edinburgh Festival, Alice Blain wrote in The Guardian: “The Bharatanatyam of Malavika Sarukkai was, her divine performance as intricate as lace.” The headline of the story is: ‘A goddess dances at Edinburgh’.
Well, the goddess is in town and talking to her is as great a pleasure as watching her lively steps on stage. Talking of journey, she says: “I feel certain things are predestined. My mother started me on Bharatanatyam when I was just seven. A child of seven does not know that she will be a dancer but I enjoyed dancing.” She was first trained by Guru Kalyanasundaram of Thanjavur school and then Guru Rajarathnam of Vazhuvoor school. She also learnt Odissi from Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra and his disciple Ramani Jena.
How did destiny intervene? The nayika smiles, “Well I do believe in destiny and I have seen it driving me to dance and little else in my life. Even when I was not making an active choice, circumstances would be such that other things would fall away. So dance has been my destiny.” Malavika gives one example that when she joined college after school she felt that she was wasting her time. Her mother Saroja Kamakshi, who had longed to be a dancer but was strained in music, was supportive and withdrew her daughter form her academic course in college. “I was lucky to have here for she could understand just what I felt.” After that it was dance all the way.
A single woman, Malavika has been able to give all of herself to her art, perfecting the art to a point that the dancer becomes the dance. She says of her art: “I have complete conviction in the classical. I do not see the classical as antiquity that has to be preserved. It is living and organic. Within that there is tradition. I would say my dance is traditional but the energy that I enthuse it with is contemporary.”
How would she define dance? Malavika says: “Classical dance gives a complete experience and it deepens as you go deeper into the art. Dance has the elements of rhythm, beat, philosophy, poetry, religion and mythology. It is a complete languagein itself. It requires long years of training and practice for here one sings with the body.” And so she sang with her body on the Sabbath like never before including the special piece on Hanuman seeing Rama for the first time because it is the favourite one of her hosts: the Goswamys. Having danced here two years ago on their invitation she considers Chandigarh like home.