DANCE OF JOY

DANCE

4 Aug

Recently landed: Dance of Joy

Gracia’s written response to Christopher Gunrsamy’s Ānanda: Dance of Joy, especially for Fjord Review.

Subscribe to and support Fjord Review.

Bharatanatyam soloist, Christopher Gurusamy, describes his practice as purely based on his traditional dance training, Bharatanatyam, an Indian classical dance that originated in the Hindu temples of Tamil Nadu in southern India. To the outside world, his practice appears as one governed by rigour, aesthetics, and geometry, guided by musicality, with an adherence to classicism, and text-based development. But inside, to paraphrase Gurusamy, in his “Outside In—Lecture Demonstration” two nights before his performance, Ānanda: Dance of Joy, also at Dancehouse’s Sylvia Staehli Theatre, his practice is also based on Beyoncé, a tiny, but healthy obsession with The Little Mermaid, obscure ’90s pop culture references, and growing up in Perth in a mixed-heritage home.

At both Tuesday’s lecture demonstration and Thursday’s performance, Ānanda: Dance of Joy, Gurusamy gives Radha the doe-eyes of The Little Mermaid’s Ariel. “My Radha is The Little Mermaid when she can’t talk; to me, that characterisation made sense.” As he lowers his chin, bats his lashes, and looks upwards, Gurusamy’s Ariel-Radha is a key to entering the dance I had not expected, and it makes perfect sense. For whether it is Ariel or Radha or Ariel-Radha, a universal hybrid of the two, the feeling is conveyed. Equally, the openness and warmth of the conversational lecture, in which he describes traditional composition and his own process as a performer, is within Ānanda: Dance of Joy, which begins with the exquisite, golden light-balancing beauty of primordial chaos in Origins, and concludes with the Thillāna, the final piece in a Bharatanatyam repertoire.

Where, like Ariel, I might not have the words, as I dip into two things less familiar to me, the meaning is felt, and the openness and warmth of the invitation extended and the opportunity to sit and let it wash over me and see what bubbles up is one no-one should or could refuse. As Gurusamy slaps his foot to the floor to make an unmistakable thwack, repeatedly with precision of landing and in prefect time with the music, the many bells around his ankles[i] become an instrument, for though the lecture and performance features recorded music, each jangle of the bells, and rap of the underside of his foot, adds to the impression. Like an arrow ascending, he springs skyward in defiance of gravity, and lands lightly to the sounds of his necklace falling against his chest and the undeniable sonic immediacy of bells.

[i] “Ankle bells, also known as gejje, salangai, muvva, or gejjalu in South India and ghungroo up North, have captured the fancy of poet and king alike. The ornament, in its most delicate form as a golusu or payal, is indicative femininity and is a prescribed ornament for women in ancient texts such as Tiruvempavai of Manickavasagar.” Gayathri Iyer, “How Indian dancers move to the sound of the ankle bells: Call them by any name — salangai or ghungroo — they are a dancer’s best companion”, The Hindu, 26th April, 2024, https://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/dance/how-indian-dancers-move-to-the-sound-of-the-ankle-bells/article67841512.ece, accessed 24th July, 2024.