Excerpts of Dancer Ananda’s ‘Tales from the Bull and the Tiger’ to stage at Soorya Festival on Monday
Trivandrum / October 15, 2023
Thiruvananthapuram, Oct. 15: Renowned classical dancer Dr Ananda Shankar Jayant of Hyderabad will stage her power-packed Bharatanatyam-Kuchipudi production ‘Tales from the Bull and the Tiger’ at the ongoing Soorya Festival on Monday.
The 77-minute trailblazing work, with 23 artistes, will be staged on October 16 at 6.45 pm, bringing to life Ganesha Skanda Devi Parvati and Bhagawan Shiva through poetry, music and philosophy in Sanskrit and Tamil. The venue is the Soorya Ganesham Hall at Thycaud in the city.
The experimental production, which retells the stories of Lord Shiva and Parvathi as told by the godly couple’s vahanas Nandi and Simha, has been acclaimed for its riveting choreography backed by precision and aesthetics.
Along with Dr Ananda, the main performers are Mithun Shyam, Aditi Rao, Poojitha Namburi, Archita Bhat, Srividya Sripathi, Neha Sathanapalli and Ridhisri Yadav besides Cameo Sreekanth on the lights.
Choreographed by the Dr Ananda, ‘Tales from the Bull and the Tiger’ has its musical soundscape composed by Sathiraju Venumadhav, and I.V. Renukaprasad, digital design by young creative artist Gunjan Ashtaputre and voice by Jayant Dwarkanath.
Padma Shri Dr Ananda, who is the Artistic Director of 1979-founded Shankarananda Kalakshetra in the Telangana capital, is an alumnus of Chennai’s Kalakshetra and a recipient of the Sangeet Natak Akademi Puraskar (2009). Having served Railways as an IRTS officer, her penchant for harnessing technology for the arts led Dr Ananda to create Natyarambha as a first-of-its-kind Bharanatyam practice app. The 2017-launched facility has users from students and gurus across the world.
More recently, Dr Ananda came up with cutting-edge digital product named Kutty Kahani. A video-embedded e-book that brings Indic stories by and for children through the prism of art, it caught the attention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who hailed the unique venture in his Mann ki Baat radio broadcast on June 18.
A sought-after TED speaker who actively engages with young India on a wide range of topics, Dr Ananda gives motivational talks at corporate houses, leadership programs, hospitals, universities and schools.
The dance has been travelling across Kerala for a week, having performed every evening since October 10. The first was at Pinarayi in Kannur district.
