Actor-dancer-researcher Swarnamalya Ganesh has been going beyond her doctoral studies to flesh out stories of the old Thanjavur era and present them in a variety of ways. In doing this, she is encouraging rasikas to appreciate the less known sides of Indian dance.
This season, Swarnamalya lays out the less known histories of the Nayak period in south India, and highlights the cross cultures that played out then in the music and in dance.
In Chennai where she is based, the dancer has got up an art exhibition curated along with scholar K T Gandhi Rajan of art, paintings, photos and copies from the Nayak and post Nayak era on the performing arts. The show is at the Roja Muthiah Research Library at Tarmani campus and runs for over a week from March 15.
On March 14, she hosts Dr S. Balusamy of Madras Christian College, Chennai for a talk on the ‘Socio-political, performance histories and context of classical music and dance between the 16th and 19th centuries’. This is at the MGR Janaki College for Women at 5.30 p.m.
On March 19 evening, Swarnamalya performs at The Music Academy for a production she has named ‘ From the Attic’ where she journeys through the Nayak period, sourcing the repertoire of those times and invokes the cross cultural lines that ran through them.
So she has a set of Manganiyar artistes as accompanists alongside others and her costume and makeup attempts to take the look of the era that she hopes to represent.
For more info call 96775 80383. www.fromtheattic.in
