It may stick to the classical but for rasikas of dance, the annual festival that Natyarangam hosts in Chennai is an event they look forward too.

There is a theme, there are resource people, there is time for research and deliberation and discussion and there is time to practise for the Big Day.

Natyarangam is the 'dance wing' one Narada Gana Sabha Trust, a leading institution in Chennai and its small team gives itself about six months time to plan and prepare for this fest.

This year, the theme was ' Bharatham Mahabhaaratham' and it provided the invited dancers an opportunity to delve into the soul of some of the most fascinating characters that ride out of this epic story.

The first part of each evening was set aside for artistes from the story telling / folk / alternate performance fields while the second show was exclusively classical.

The fest was held from August 27 to Sept.2.

What called for great appreciation was the willingness of the organisers to invite artistes from different fields to also present their versions of these characters.

So we had theatre and film actor Nasser essaying the role of Karna. A fairly captivating performance on a stage packed with significant props, aided by great lighting and enriched with prerecorded music ( some parts though were jarring). . . .

Quite in contrast later that evening was the classical Bharatanatyam recital of Shridhar and Anuradha, the couple from Bangalore. . . with the former essaying the same character.

We also has theatre, film and TV artiste Rohini presenting a riveting performance to readings that portrayed Draupadi on Day 5. Dancer Sreelatha Vinod, a disciple of the Dhananjayans did her version of the same character but stuck closely to the classical format.

The fest opened on a formal note. The Dhananjayans were honoured on this occasion with the Natyacharyas award - and there were awards for dancers Shridhar and his wife Anuradha, vocalist Radha Badri and young Bangalore-based dancer Kirit Ramgopal.

Dhananjayan was transformed in minutes after that formal function - he presented Bhishma and it was a rivetting performance. He got a standing ovation that night.

Priya Murle did Ambai after Usha Rani did hers in the koothu tradition on Day Two. There was a touch of koothu and Tai-chi in Priya's recital.

Chitra Chandrashekar Dasarathy played Kunti while N. Srikanth got a rousing applause for his version of Arjuna. This followed Kothamangalam Vishwanathan's katha of the same character in his villupattu session.

On the last day, for dancer Sheejith Krishna, doing the role of Krishna was perhaps an easy task, having soaked in it in previous productions.

Well-known scholar Prema Nandakumar was the resource person for this festival.