Kalanidhi Maami's big day
It was a big day for dance guru Kalanidhi Narayanan (popularly called 'Maami' in the dance circles) on December 6th. It was maami's 75th birthday. And her students decided to celebrate the occasion with a seminar on dance.
On two days, Dec. 6 and 7, at the Community Hall on Luz Avenue, Mylapore, Chennai, it was a huge gathering of young dancers and senior gurus who came to wish maami and take part in the event too.
Lec-dems were presented by Vyjayanthimala Bali:'Divya Prabandham', K.J. Sarasa: 'Tamil Padams', Lakshmi Viswanathan: 'Kshetrayya padams and javalis', Chitra Visweswaran: 'Jaydeva's Gita Govinda', Dhananjayans: 'Arunachala Kavi's Rama Natakam', Sudharani Raghupathy: 'Purandaradasa kritis', Narasimhacharis: 'Annamacharya kritis', C.V. Chandrasekar: 'Surdas and Meera'.
Evening performances featured students of Kalanidhi Narayanan, mostly from outside Chennai and abroad.
Also on the occasion a 4-volume audio CD pack was released. It contains 2 volumes of Ksetrayya padams, and one volume each of Sarangapani and Annamayya compositions. The songs have been sung by Kalanidhi Narayanan, Vanathi Raghuraman and late Vijayalakshmi. The CDs are available only as a set and cost Rs.500. Art critic K.S. Mahadevan released the CDs and Leela Shekar of IDA received the first copy.
Says Jayanthi Subramaniam one of the key organisers of the event, "The shows were well attended by dancers and even the performers showed great enthusiasm because they were dancing before a well informed audience."
And food was also part of the event!
