Indo-American Arts Council, Inc.

Mallika Sarabhai's Washington D.C. Concert a Hit

Aziz Haniffa

WASHINGTON - Renowned dancer Mallika Sarabhai thrilled both connoisseurs and budding dance students alike over the weekend at a concert and two workshops she conducted here. Sarabhai's performance and workshops that inaugurated the Smithsonian Sackler Gallery's exhibition "Devi: The Great Goddess," were such a hit that the tickets were snapped up so fast that the 300-seat concert hall filled up quickly. A special video link had to be set up in the conference room of the gallery for dance lovers to catch her in action. In her performance on March 27, Sarabhai, the pioneering, classically-trained dancer - who played a lead role in Peter Brook's "Mahabharata"- showed her versatility in dance forms addressing the plight and struggle of women in India, as well as traditional pieces in the Bharala Natyam and Kuchipudi styles.

On March 28, she held two dance performances-cum-workshops where she showed through several examples why no dancer ever dances in exactly the same way each time.

One such example was the scene of Krishna as he "came with the cowherd boy," in which she showed how it could be performed in a variety of ways, each dance different in its permutations and combinations. In an interview with huSa Abroad, Sarabhai said she found the audiences "absolutely amazing, in terms of just the concentration, the quality of listening, and the quality of participation."

She hoped that she had been able to satisfy the connoisseurs, arts lovers and dance students as well as "just people who were interested in Indian art and knew very little about it" Tracing the genesis of the program, Sarabhai said, Vidya Dehejia. associate director and chief curator of Southeast and South Asian art at the Sackler, "first spoke to me about it two years ago when she was first thinking of putting together the exhibition."

"Then over the next two years," Sarabhai explained, "as the exhibition plans proceeded, it so happened that my publishing company was also publishing the catalogue, so she kept sending me chapters as they came in."
In any case, Sarabhai said, "This is a subject with which I worked a lot in any case - reinterpreting myths, looking at the way women mythological and historical characters are represented in a male society. So it was very much up my street"

"When Vidya and I a year ago discussed the way Mallika Sarabhai the exhibition was divided into six different portions, from the very classical to the contemporary to the folk, then it began to sort of fall into place what I wanted to do," she said. "I am a great Shakti follower in any case."

Dehejia told India Abroad, "Her performance was absolutely out of this world. It was a complete repertory which she had choreographed and produced entirely for this exhibition."

She said that Sarabhai had "tailored the performance so brilliantly that it was just perfect for the exhibition." She added: "She is the quintessential professional and a wonderful human being." On March 29 and 30, Sarabhai was billed to per form in New York under the aegis of the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, the Indo-American Arts Council, and the Battery Dance Company in cooperation with the Smithsonian Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery.

The shows are being sponsored by India Abroad, the founding sponsor of the Arts Council, the State Bank of India, and the Hotel Lexington.

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