Chennai based Mohiniattam dancer Gopika Varma presented a new dance production 'Samarpanam' on 9 April, 2005 at The Music Academy's auditorium, Chennai.

The production was themed on the famed Padmanaba Swami temple in Thiruvananthapuram. It featured compositions based on the history of the temple, its structure and stories, culled out from Sangam literature to Swathi Tirunal.

Gopika performed this alongwith 12 dancers of Dasyam, Gopika's school for Mohiniattam in Chennai.

Research for the production is by Prof. Sashibhushan and the music for some of the new verses is set by Kavalam Narayana Panikar.

Gopika plans to stage this production at various places in India through this year, at Delhi, Bombay, Bangalore, Calcutta, Cochin, Trivandrum, Coimbatore, Hyderabad and Mysore.

The production will tour U.S.A and the Middle East in 2006.

At the event in Chennai, a new VCD titled 'Samarpanam', featuring a Mohiniattam margam, performed as a solo by Gopika, was released.

An award was presented to Kalamandalam Sathyabhama, Retd. Principal of Kalamandalam. The Governor of Tamil Nadu, Surjit Singh Barnala was the chief guest on this occasion.

Contact: Dasyam, Ph: 24902551. E-mail: gopikadasyam@yahoo.com Website: www.gopikavarma.com

A love story from Sangam age...

Chennai based Bharatanatyam dancer Lakshmi Ramaswamy staged a new dance production, 'Sangamum Sangamamum' on March 31, 2005 at the Tamil Nadu Govt. Music College, Chennai. Featuring poems from 'Natrinai' of the Sangam age, the production weaves together the description of the five landscapes and a love story.

Says Lakshmi, who is a senior disciple of Chitra Visweswaran, "I was fascinated by the amount of scope in the Sangam poetry, which is yet to be showcased in full. More interesting is the inner meaning in each poem. We tried to portray the difference between the word-to-word meaning and the inner meaning in each poem, with a change in the rhythm."

Choreographed by Lakshmi, who also took the lead role, the production featured her students Roshni, Radha, Vidya, Poornima, Lakshmi, Sweta, Gomathy and Archana and guest dancers Guhendran and Senthil Kumar. Research was by Prof. S. Raghuraman and music composed by Vanathy Raghuraman.

Contact: Ph: 24473747. E-mail: lakshmiramaswamy@eth.net