A CLASSICAL CONUNDRUM

A conversation with Padma Bhushan awardee Alarmel Valli, considered an intellectual of the dance form of Bharatanatyam, on how the pre-digital era dance training was done

- DEEPA CHAKRAVARTHY

Bharatanatyam is no more a regional pride; it has become global, as popular as Yoga in the classical dance genre. What got democratized after the disenfranchisement of the matriarchal hereditary community is today a decentralized industry. While decentralization is an imperative stamp for the oral tradition, giving the form a converging and diverging quality, what threatens Bharatanatyam is the non-traditional approach adopted by the dance educators, whose focus is merely on teaching ‘items.’ As a result, the essence of Bharatnatyam as a knowledge tradition has taken a hard hit.

Are the students of classical dance taught holistically to be intellectually observant and emotionally stable individuals? Is making loud noises using social media a healthy practice for the learners of the art form? I reached out to Alarmel Valli, a celebrated Bharatanatyam dancer to know more on how in the pre-digital era dance training was done.