‘Too many mediocre dance performances’

Every time this veteran dancer takes the stage, he ensures that he has the audience in attention. This time too, when this renowned dancer from Malaysia performed a thillana in the praise of Lord Shiva, in the city recently as part of the Nartaka Festival, he had the audience eating out his hands.
“It’s not very often I perform Bharatanatyam in Chennai, but I decided to present the audience with something different this season, “ says Ramli Ibrahim, who has been enthralling the Chennai dance lovers with his Odissi performances all these days.He adds, “Though Chennai is a Carnatic music and Bharatanatyam hub, there are takers for Odissi as well. After all, at the end of the day, everybody wants to enjoy a good art form.”
This dancer, who always has a smile on his face, is however, not happy with the way youngsters are approaching classical dance. “Youngsters are learning dance through the Internet, while I am a strong advocate of the Guru-Shishya parampara. A majority of the people do not want to pursue classical dance as a career. Moreover, these days, dance performances last only two –three minutes. Hence, the depth in these performances is lacking. Dancers have become three-minute wonders. Also, the attention span among the audience has come down,” says he, adding that the number of mediocre performances have gone up. “These performances have resulted in the rise in the number of faceless dancers.” But what’s keeping the dancer upbeat is the fact that he received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award from none other than the President of India, Pranab Mukherjee. “I am really excited to be receiving the award and I have few more concerts and performances lined up for the year.”