Indian Classical Dance at “Dancing the Gods”

World Music Institute presented a festival of Indian Dance, as it has the past three years. This time around, the performers were Rahul Acharya, Vidhya Subramanian, Shambhavi Dandekar, and Janaki Rangarajan. They performed in three different styles: Odissi, Bharata Natyam, and Kathak. Half the performances were to taped music—a shame—the other half were accompanied by an extraordinary ensemble, including Roopa Mahadevan, Puneet Panda, Anjna Swaminathan, Rajan Srikrishnan, and the marvelous percussionist Rajna Swaminathan. You can read my review for DanceTabs here.

And here is a short excerpt: “The organizers went out on a limb, inviting a quartet of younger, lesser-known dancers, who shared two double-bills. One, Rahul Acharya, was an anomaly: a male practitioner of the predominantly female-style odissi (which originated as a devotional dance performed by devadasis in temples.)”