With Ballet & Kuchipudi, world's a stage

The stereotypical image of the classical dance guru has undergone a change. From being a reserved man, far removed from his audience, today, a guru will talk to his audience and explain the nuances of his art form to them. He has had to change because it's the only thing that keeps the audiences coming back. As Kaushalya Reddy, a doyenne of the Kuchipudi dance form says, it's the "survival of the art and the artiste himself".
In keeping with that spirit of change, the Parampara Series by the Raja Radha Reddy Institute of Kuchipudi Dance has for the first time asked foreign artistes to perform alongside them in Delhi and in Hyderabad (see box). The two sisters, Radha and Kaushalya Reddy, and their daughters, Yamini and Bhavana, said that after a decade of Parampara, "it was finally time to do something new".
The Reddys have always been fairly rooted in tradition — they chose to stick to traditional music rather than use Rahman's Jai Ho for their performance at the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games because Rahman, who was touring at the time, didn't have adequate time to work on the composition with the Reddys — and their list of invitees is also fairly traditional. But at the same time interesting.
Natalia Kasatkina and Vladimir Vasiliyov of the Moscow Classical Ballet will dance parts from Don Quixote and Swan Lake, a ballet that should very soon be talked about a lot more because of Darren Aronofsky's film Black Swan which got Natalie Portman an Oscar nomination.
The next day, Jose Porcel will dance the Flamenco, which is on UNESCO's intangible cultural heritage list. He will be followed by Raja and Radha Reddy, the Whirling Dervishes of Turkey and the Paul Taylor 2 Dance Company. All performances will be free.
While the Reddys did think of ticketing the event as "audiences value a performance more when they have to pay for it" and "the same tickets abroad would cost you between $200-300", dealing with the government departments involved "proved too labyrinthine". The costs for now have been covered by the sponsors.