Do you wake up early on Sunday mornings?

Well, if you don't, you may want to hear this story of some 300 Chennaites who get together for breakfast and then listen to a lecture on the last Sunday of every month.

On October 31, the lecture that these Chennaites listened to was themed on 'Dances of South India' and was presented by arts enthusiast Sujatha Vijayaraghavan, who is also part of Natyarangam, the dance wing of Narada Gana Sabha.

This was the 31st lecture in the South India Heritage Lecture seriers organised at Tag Centre on T.T.K. Road, Alwarpet.

The lecture series is the brainchild of R. T. Chari, a patron of music and the arts, who set up the Tag Corporation and built Tag Centre as well.

Being held from February 2002, the lecture series are designed to promote awareness and stimulate pride about the rich heritage of South India. Thirty talks so far have highlighted various facets of South India’s heritage - science, history, philosophy, religion, architecture, culture, drama, cinema, music and the arts and cuisine.

The talks are sponsored by R.T.Chari and his brother R.V.Gopalan through TAG Group of companies and their family trust, Ramu Endowments.

The last ten lectures featured 'Homage to Ariyakkudi and Musiri' by V. Sriram, 'Four giants of Tamil Culture' by Dr. S. Raghuraman, 'Evolution of Tamil Scripts' by Iravatham Mahadevan, 'Music, melodies and M.S.' by Randor Guy, 'Indigenous knowledge and practice of medicine in South India' by Dr. V.R. Seshadri, 'The Indo-Lankans' by S. Muthiah, 'Theru-k-koothu' by Dr. V. Padma, 'The Ajantha Heritage' by S. Swaminathan and 'Jainism in Tamil Nadu' by S. Sripal.

On Sunday last, Sujatha Vijayaraghavan focussed on four classical dance forms of south India - Bharatanatyam, Kuchipudi, Kathakali and Mohiniattam. She highlighted the distinct features of each of these dance forms, and touched on their history and origin, format and content. Following the one-hour lecture, a ten-minute piece from each dance form was presented by dancers Priyadarshini Govind (Bharatanatyam), Uma Muralikrishna (Kuchipudi), C.V. Santhosh Kumar (Kathakali) and Mythili Sushil Maratt (Mohiniattam). The dancers performed to taped music.

This was followed by an interaction with the dancers, and they had a few questions from some enthusiastic members of the audience.

Most of the audience consists of 'regulars' and the friends-circle of R. T. Chari and the network formed by them. And well, mostly 50-plus. Why not more youngsters?

Says Writer-Editor S.R. Madhu, who is one of the organisers, "It's up to them! Frankly, today's hip and mod MTV-viewing pub-loving cellphone-sporting youngsters are more into jazz, pop and rock than Carnatic music, the traditions of our Chettiars, Iyengars or therukoothu..." May be someone there may want to wake up early now!

Anyone interested can to write to Tag Centre, 36, T.T.K. Road, Alwarpet, Chennai 600 018. Ph: 2467 2741 E-mail: southernheritage@tagcorporation.net