hyphenated twentysomething

Sita Ram, a musical

Going along with my recent post on musicals, here is an interesting musical/dance perfomance called "Sita Ram." In collaboration with The Lookingglass Theatre and the Chicago Children's Choir, the Natya Dance Theatre puts on a multicultural, east-west hybrid, and overall vibrant performance on an adaptation of the Hindu epic, "Ramayana." Currently the show is sold-out, but considering its high popularity and acclaimed reviews, I'm hoping that there will be more future performances, possibly on a larger scale. I admit, I'm personally biased to this performance and its positive reviews because I was formerly a Bharata Natyam student of guru Smt. Hema Rajagopalan, founding director of Natya Dance Theatre. In my opinion and from personal experiences and performances, I have not seen more stellar, structured, and creative classical Indian dance performances anywhere else. If you are interested in Indian classical dance, I would urge you to check out the Natya Dance Theatre's site (click on the link above) and go to any one of their performances and events coming up.

As for "Sita Ram", I am especially delighted that this particular performance involves many different groups (as mentioned above), ethnicities, and creative elements to create a performance that holds onto the original Hindu story without undermining it, and also appeals to a wide audience. It is interesting to me the different ways in which Bharata Natyam is being portrayed, included, and adapted in more American performances, especially alongside rock music and other dance forms such as ballet, jazz, etc. I think such growth is beneficial and empowering especially to future Indian classical dancers as we try to integrate this cultural, ancient dance with other cultures and art forms that surround us and interest us in our lives. It brings a different perspective to this art form. However, I am always hesitant when such development turns into degrading and manipulating this art form just to appeal wider audiences or for the sake of modernization. Evolvement and integrations are important and to a certain extent necessary, but there should be limits and a fine line between diluting a dance and enhancing it.

In addition, exotification is a whole another issue, and I've heard some remarks about this. Unfortunately, I only saw part of the performance, and really only paid attention to the choreography and Indian dance moves, so I'm really hoping that they haven't drained the quality of the musical with a "foreign", "so-out-there" vibe.

Nevertheless, the performers are young and have a wide diversity among them and I believe this is what really makes the performance come alive and connect with the audience. And it all comes from Chicago! This is the creation of director-writer David Kersnar with assistance from choreographer Kritika Rajagopalan and music composer, Grammy-nominated Jai Uttal. Here are two reviews from the Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune. The CT's review is much better, at least on the eye, as it doesn't exotify the entire performance. The ST's review on the hand, is just painful to read. Manish on Sepia Mutiny, writes a great post on this. Go read it. Enough said. Both however, do give great reviews in regards to the overall performance. Here is the official press release from The Lookingglass Theatre.

Information:

"Sita Ram"

When: Through April 2
Where: Lookingglass Theatre, 821 Michigan Ave.
Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes
Tickets: Sold out

posted by payal @ 1:40 PM