Dance guru Indira Rajan being felicitated at the inauguration of the festival

Click here to see pictures of the dance fest - Kshetra Bharatham

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Natyarangam, the dance wing of Chennai based arts organisation, Narada Gana Sabha celebrated its eleventh annual dance festival from August 7 to 12.
The thematic dance presentations of Natyarangam are popular among the rasikas. The extensive research and translating the theme and the ideas into classical dance was started by this group in 1997, when India celebrated the Golden jubilee of independence.

This year's festival titled 'Kshetra Bharatham' featured thematic presentation on sacred places. Being the eleventh year of the fest, eleven artistes took up eleven different keshtras, guided by eleven resource persons.

On the inaugural day, on Aug. 7, dance guru Indira Rajan was honoured. This year's Prof. Sudharani Raghupathy Award was received by violinist N. Sigamani. The Obul Reddy Award was presented to Narthaki Nataraj and the Vasanthalakshmi Narasimhachari award went to dancer Mythili Prakash.

On that day, dansue, director of Kalakshetra Foundation Leela Samson presented 'Varanasi'. The resource person dancer - guru Prof. C. V. Chandrasekhar briefed about Varanasi. The music for this programme was scored by the Carnatic singer Bombay Jayashri.

On Aug. 8 dancer Praveen Kumar presented the Pandharpur kshetram, on the guidance of Swami Namananda Giri. This was followed by the presentation by Narthaki Nataraj on Madurai and the resource person Revathy Sankkaran spoke on the theme and town.

The Chennai kshetram was presented by dancer Gayathri Balagurunathan for which Sudha Seshayyan, Tamil scholar, was the resource person. This programme was followed by dancer Sreelatha Vinod's presentation of Puri kshetram. S. Sundararajan has done the research on this theme.

Two important holy places Tirupati and Srirangam were presented by dancers A. Lakshman and Priyadarshini Govind on Aug. 10.
Pappu Venugopala Rao, who has done elaborate writings on Annamayya, the saint poet who composed many songs on the Lord at Tirupati wasthe resource person for A. Lakshman's dance on the day.
And Tamil scholar and writer Prema Nandakumar was the resource person for the presentation of Srirangam.

Tiruchendur and Kanchipuram were the holy places for Aug. 11 and dancer Roja Kannan presented Tiruchendur, with guidance from Kausalya Sivakumar, a popular religious speaker in Tamil.
Chithra Madhavan, a doctorate in ancient History and Archaeology was the resource person for the dance by Vidhya Subramanian on Kanchipuram.

On the concluding day on Aug. 12, Mathura and Chidambaram, the two holy places, where the two divine dancers Krishna and Shiva, said to have danced, were presented by the dancers Rama Vaidyanathan and N. Srikanth.
While advocate and arts promoter R. Krishnaswamy of Narada Gana Sabha was the resource person for the Mathura kshetram, the Tamil scholar and speaker Sarada Nambi Arooran has guided dancer Srikanth for the Chidambaram theme.

Natyarangam functions in the premises of Narada Gana Sabha, 314, T.T.K. Road, Alwarpet, Chennai - 18. Phone: 2499 3201 Here is a photo gallery on the festival.

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