The concept sounded awesome on paper (or rather on my phone screen) which said 'Dance meets painting'. The build up was promising, 'Ghanan Ghanan extended' from 'Lagaan' reinforcing what I had in mind about the show.
The concept was novel. 4 painters doing their paintings while dancers perform on stage. It was in support of an NGO named 'Alambana'. That's very good. The anchor talked about colors and associated emotions and it started in a dignified manner with a 2 minute silence for M.F Husain (It was hardly 30 seconds!)
The first performance was a sufi dance performance on Jodha Akbar's 'Khwaja mere khwaja'. Associated color: white. Fine.
What happened next and continued till last performance was pure disappointment. The dance performances which you see on the myriad TV dance reality shows. One of these 'contemporary' dances even had some acrobatics included! One after the other umpteen Bollywood numbers followed and the dancers flaunted their art with anchor talking randomly about colors which were conspicuous only by their absence. The performance with 'romance' theme (associated color: pink) had dancers in black,white and grey dresses while purple themed performance had the dancer in Gold and Black dress! The songs ended abruptly and a few times the music stopped during the performances. There was not a semblance of any attempt at trying to establish a coherence between colors and performances.
There were lot of loud cheers and applause but almost all the cheers came from the presenter group members. I spent more time in trying to check out the paintings than watching the dances!
The performances were fine but the entire concept of having Bollywood dance numbers accompanying the painters was disgusting. It would have been so much more if the dance and music was soulful, more Indian and aimed at arousing emotions rather than claps! I can't say much about paintings though because I am not an art expert, however atleast one of the paintings remained incomplete, while another seemed overdone. The same seemed to be the case of the show. While the thought process that went on conceptualization seemed half baked, the presentation ceremony went on and on, with a producer's speech that would have made one feel of witnessing a Broadway production!
The last performances ended with dancers splashing dry colors (much to amusement of first benchers) on stage and on each other. The colors finally brought to life a drab show devoid of colors. It ended well, but it definitely wasn't at all well.
(In the pic: painter Sri Murugan doing his painting based on one of the performances)
3 comments:
nothing in art can ever be a mistake and the pain that an artist goes through to put it up is just..... ! well, a software professional like u would obviously not understand coz u dont have to practice 8 to 10 hours a day nor do u have to perform inspite of severe cuts and ur being peeled off ! all u have to do is just refer to it as "acrobatics" or "immitation" of some reality shows. wonder if u can sustain on that ring for the same "30 seconds" or wish u could ever experience practicing in the sun on that stage ! oh wait! ur office has AC . why would u !
Very well written. Kudos. Honest and unbiased review. I like the part where you say that the applause came more from the presenter group itself. That is so often the case with inexperienced, amateur groups wanting to get their name in the papers. And not doing something for the pure love of it and learning first under experienced people. You should write more reviews, Hyd needs that. Reviews and not just reports :)
@shravya
You are right, I can't sustain 30 (or maybe even 10) seconds on that ring because I am not performing that dance. However I won't challenge you to write code which 'software engineers' sitting in 'AC offices' like mine, do. And that's not the point. I am not criticizing the performances (I said performances were fine) but saying that these performances were not in the spirit of the concept. Hope you understand the difference. Nothing personal!
@Anonymous
These guys are young and they worked hard and may be celebration was a bit pre-mature :) We should cut them that much slack! Glad you liked the review.
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