Members of the Nrityagram Dance Ensemble performed Friday at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Even when the meaning isn’t entirely clear to a Western observer, Indian dance casts a haunting spell. The seductive gestures, precise unison movements and suggestive facial expressions give the art a distinctive and mesmeric personality.
One exemplar of the genre is the Nrityagram Dance Ensemble, which made a return visit to the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium on Friday as part of the Viva! & Gala series.
Nrityagram is a dance village where artistic director Surupa Sen explores classical Indian dance forms expanded through contemporary ideas. On tour, she collaborates with two female dancers, Pavithra Reddy and Bijayini Satpathy, and a quartet of male musicians – Sanjib Kunda (violin), Parashuram Das (flute), Shibashankar Satapathy (percussion) and Jateen Sahu (voice) – who are seated at stage right providing a constant flow of reflective and exuberant sounds.
The music and dance are seamlessly woven together. A drone wafting from a hurdy-gurdy-like instrument (played by Satapathy) is always present to connect sound and movement.
REVIEW
Nrityagram is a proponent of the Indian style known as Odissi, for the ancient temple that inspires the dance. The chief characteristics of the style could be discerned in “Sridevi,” the work celebrating Mother Goddess that opened Friday’s program.
The three beautiful dancers, dressed in sumptuous robes, jewelry and bells, stand in sculptural poses and engage in a series of intricate and animated patterns. Every move of a finger or turn of the torso implies something about the journey they are portraying.
At times, they smile directly at the audience in coy satisfaction or bulge eyes in what appears to indicate terror. Their hands undulate and flex, and they often stomp their feet to the rhythmic accents in the music.
The sacred and poetic nature of Indian dance is conjured in “Ritu Vasant,” in which Satpathy and Reddy drop flower petals before bending their fluid bodies in mirror images, sudden spurts of physical energy and, finally, meditative repose.
Artistic director Sen emphasizes the sensuous side of the art in “Srimayi,” a dance of desire that begins on the floor and moves upward to a panoply of playful, exultant and teasing ideas. No expressive moment is wasted as Sen uses subtle body language – elastic torso, nuanced eyes – as a means of narrative commentary.
The women of Nrityagram alternate between the noble and the earthy in “Aakriti,” the Indian word for form. Balances and poses reveal the consummate control they have developed. The asymmetrical rhythms in the music are reflected in the dancers’ increasingly complex physicality.
Satpathy and Sen evoke “the duality of the human spirit” in the program’s final work, “Vibhakta,” which veers between slow-motion episodes and vivacious flights, including bodies twirling. The piece illustrates the refined detail, invigorating attack and mystical calm that are essential to Indian dance.