Ananda Shankar Jayant: Kerala gives good support to art

Renowned classical dancer and former civil servant with the rail service Ananda Shankar Jayant is in Kerala with her production of Tales from the Bull and Tiger, a 77-minute production with about 20 artistes, a rendering of the stories of Shiva and Parvathi, narrated by their vahanas, the bull and the tiger.

The performance, a spellbinding combination of Bharatanatyam-Kuchipudi, wound its way across seven stages in Kerala - like a “travelling circus” says the charmingly down-to-earth dance director - and is set to culminate in Thiruvananthapuram on Monday. “At Kalamandalam, the students loved it,” she says. “Kerala is an extraordinary place for art, because the government, temples and even private parties, continuously support art.”

The production was in Kerala last year without Ananda, as she was undergoing an angioplasty, and has come back on the insistence of cultural doyen Soorya Krishnamoorthy. In fact, the Padma Shri and Sangeet Natak Akademi awardee’s talk on combating cancer has, apparently, been ranked ‘one of 12 incredible TED talks’. She talked to Kochi Times about the production, how a passion is important to tide through life and harnessing social media.

Telling a story of a divine household
“The script is adapted from Sansrit and Tamil literature. I imagined it as a divine household of a couple and two children, with the latter asking the vahanas to tell them stories of their parents,” says Ananda, who has written and directed the energetically engaging six-scene production. “They start with the wedding of Shiva and Parvathi, followed by a sringara sequence and then, they establish their saguna-rupa (physical form) and so on, closing with the Shiva thandavan and then, the family cuddling up. I am imagining a household with two boys, and their pet mushika (rat) and peacock. It is the day in the life of a divine family.”

Art could aid health
My message to parents is to help you children nurture a passion. It isn’t necessary that they should be the greatest at it or earn a lot from it, but it becomes their go-to place and their core strength. It becomes their stress buster. It could be gardening, cooking, sewing or even math. The business of life is to challenge you. Through every challenge, you learn, but it can also be overwhelming. So to help you deal with your challenges that life throws at you and to help you ride it out, an overriding passion plays a big part.

Social media is a good place to put out the right message and it is a democratic medium. It has improved our reach, and youngsters are finding it ‘kewl’. But the attention span is minimal; I am not happy with the reels concept, which is only for a short time.

Pics courtesy: @JTPac