Rising Stars – Eight Award-Winning Young Indian Classical Dancers
New Delhi, India
22 July 2009

By Shyamhari Chakra

Sangeet Natak Akademi, India’s national academy of performing arts announced eight promising Indian classical dancers as the winners of the prestigious Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Prativa (young talent) Awards last year.  Tracking down these award winners to profile them was more difficult than I thought.

The awards were instituted in 2006 in memory of the legendary sehnai player Ustad Bismillah Khan who hardly needs an introduction to anyone connected with the world of music. The award goes to the dancers below the age of 35 who have made mark in their respective fields.

The awardees were Gayatri Balagurunathan (Bharatanatyam), Gauri Diwakar (Kathak), Vijaykumar N. (Kathakali), Bimbavati Devi (Manipuri), Rahul Acharya (Odissi), Arunima Kumar (Kuchipudi), Meernanda Barthakur (Sattriya), and Purvadhanshree (Vilasini Natyam in the category of other major dance traditions). There were no awardee in four more categories – Mohiniattam (the dance of the enchantress practiced exclusively by women in the southern Indian state of Kerala), Chhau (the martial arts dance form of eastern India), Creative and Experimental, and Music for Dance. The awardees were presented the awards in a special ceremony in New Delhi following which they will present public performances.

New Delhi-based Kuchipudi artiste Arunima Kumar is a senior disciple of Guru Jaya Rama Rao and Vanasree Rao. Besides being a gifted dancer, she also excels in academics – she graduated in economics from prestigious Indian St. Stephen’s College and obtained a Masters from the London School of Economics. But, instead of opting for a white-collar job – as people of her generation do – she ventured into the uncertain career of classical dance. Interestingly, she is also a keen pistol shooter and has won several medals in state and national championships.

Daughter of the illustrious Manipuri dancers’ couple late Guru Bipin Singh and Kalavati Devi, Bimbavati Devi, who was born and brought up in Kolkata city, was initiated into the world of dance and music at a very tender age. Besides dancing, she has also undergone training in pung (playing of the Manipuri percussion instrument of mridang) and Thang-Ta (Manipuri martial art). She now assists her mother in running their school, Manipuri Nartanalaya, regarded as one of the pioneer institutions of Manipuri dance in the country. Bimbavati is now engaged in contemporary choreographies based on Manipuri dance and is even trying to experiment with new idioms and thus trying to expand the vocabulary of movements.

Gayatri Balagurunathan and her dancer-husband V.Balagurunathan are products of the world famous Kalakshetra Foundation based in the south Indian city of Chennai. The duo has one goal in mind - to dance and dance all over the globe and spread Indian’s oldest and most prominent dance style – Bharatanatyam. Presently, Gayatri is working as a dance guru at the Indian Fine Arts Society, Singapore. Earlier, worked as a part of the Darpana Performing Group of the famous dancer mother-daughter Mrinalini and Mallika Sarabhai and was trained in several folk dances of India besides Kuchipudi, Kathakali and Kalari Payattu, a martial art form of Kerala. She has been a winner of two important awards - Balasaraswati Award from Krishna Gana Sabha of Chennai for her talent in expressional dance and Yuva Kala Bharati award from Bharat Kalachar.

Born and brought up in the Steel City of Jamshedpur in India, Kathak dancer Gauri Diwakar was initiated into dance quite early in her life. After her initial training in her home city, she moved on to New Delhi where she had the fortune to be groomed under the living legend of Kathak, Pandit Birju Maharaj and his son Jai Kishan Maharaj, at the Kathak Kendra in New Delhi. Presently, she is a senior member of the dance repertory of the Drishtikon Dance Foundation headed by Aditi Mangaldas, a renowned dancer, guru and choreographer. Along with her Guru’s group, she has traveled and performed extensively worldwide.

Purvadhanashree, the winner of the award, is undoubtedly an outstanding dancer and a critics’ and connoisseurs’ delight to watch. She carved a niche for herself as a brilliant Bharatanatyam dancer but switched over to Vilasini Natyam six years ago. She was the first dancer to perform Vilasini Natyam at the Khajuraho Dance Festival in 2008, India’s most prestigious dance festival.

Vilasini Natyam is a relatively new name in the Indian classical dance scene and Kuchipudi exponent Swapnasundari, its principal promoter, has coined this name. Claimed to be a revival of the age-old devdasi (temple dancers and singers) tradition of Andhra Pradesh, Andhra Natyam, also belonging to the same region, has a similar claim as well. While the exponents of both the forms are yet to reach a consensus, it was strange that Vilasini Natyam was accorded the coveted status of “major Indian dance tradition”. I feel that it could be considered as an emerging form since it is yet to be established in its own state of Andhra Pradesh.

Sattriya dancer Meernanda Barthakur of the North-Eastern state of Assam is a doctor by profession and a dancer by passion. One of the few future faces of this youngest Indian classical dance form (Sattriya is the dance performed in monasteries and it is a 500-year-old living tradition, but it was accorded classical status in the year 2000), she had the fortune to be trained under two of the greatest gurus – the late Roseswar Saikia Barbayan and Nrityacharyya Jatin Goswami.

For Rahul Acharya, it was rather unusual to be a professional male dancer. He hailed from a highly educated Brahmin family and he had a thoroughly brilliant career in academics having completed his Masters in biotechnology. Usually, such families in Orissa, the land of Odissi, do not allow their male children to be dancers as it does not fetch them any decent income or social status. Yet, braving the taboo attached to the profession of a male dancer, young Rahul was encouraged by his progressive mother to have dance as a career. The first male Odissi dancer to claim the award from the Akademi, he is a widely traveled performer. A disciple of Guru Durga Charan Ranbir, he also worked with Malaysian dancer-choreographer Ramli Ibrahim as a troupe member.

(It was not possible to gather any information about the Kathakali artiste Vijaykumar N from any sources including the Akademi despite our best efforts. We regret it.)