Priyadarshini Govind

Eagerly looking forward to Priyadarshini Govind's dance performance this year! She will be visiting Lex for a dance performance on April 12 for the Indian arts exhibition at UK arts museum. Seems as though our little town is all excited for Dr.Kalam's visit and the cultural programs that would accompany his visit! Anyway, I attended a dance performance by Priyadarshini Govind, October of 2007 and I remember being so enthralled about it that I wrote a gushing article about the programme for the Kentucky Kernel which they obviously did not publish, but I gushed pretty enthusiastically all the same :p

Photo by Eric Thigpen

Each face in the audience mirrors the quickly changing emotions that dance across her features. Happy as a baby, angry like the Lord Shiva - each expression on her face arrives in a flash and remains for a mesmerizing second before exiting gracefully and yet each abhinaya stays behind in the viewers' eye taking them along its journey. Such is the power that Priyadarshini Govind's dance exudes.

At the Bharatiya Temple and Cultural Society, Priyadarshini started her BharataNatyam recital with a dance depicting femine energy, the Devi. She followed her first dance performance with an equally compelling recital on a woman waiting for her lover, the Cosmic Lord of dance, Shiva to come to her. The second half of her performance covered a wide range of emotions - the love of mother Kausalya for her dear son, the baby Rama; the mischievous invitation that a lover extends to her beloved; the pain-filled wails of a mother who has lost her son in the battlefield and finally a thillana, a fast dance that provided a fitting finale to an evening of scintillating dance moves and perfectly choreographed steps in tune with the musical instruments and the song that accompanied each piece. An evening well spent with dancer Priyadarshini Govind and accompanying artists, Maheshwar, Natarajan, Subramanian and Narayanan.

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