On July 2nd 2022, in front of an audience of about 250 people, 18 year old Aarushi Pant, student of Guru Sridevi Ajai Thirumalai of the Natyamani School of Dance, performed her 3 hour solo Bharatnatyam Dance Arangetram. Aarushi, daughter of Mandy and Pankaj Pant, mesmerized the audience with her Nritta, Nritya and Natya. Note: Nritta means pure dance, a presentation of rhythm through graceful movement of the body. Nritya consists of footwork and expressions while Natya is pure expression (abhinaya).
Her repertoire comprised a set of 10 dances (5 in the first half in the more traditional segment) and remaining five in the second half following intermission. During a small 20 min break in the first half, the audience was entertained with a musical interlude by the live orchestra comprised of vocalist, Murali Pavitran Vasudevan, mridangist, Murali Balachandran, violinist Tara Bangalore and rythmist Sudarshan Thirumalai. Also shared during this time was a slideshow by Aarushi on the various common hand gestures known as "mudras" that she used to depict actions/emotions during her performance.
From portraying the Hindu God Ganesh in "Gaye Ganapati" to showing the love at first sight encounter between Ram and Sita in "Deva Devam Bhaje" to showing the king of Dance, Lord Shiva in the Varnam, to playing both Goddess Durga and Goddess Kali in "Tripura Sundari" to transitioning into "Baby Krishna" in "Maiyya Mori", Aarushi left the audience speechless performing to sheer perfection each of the rich diverse roles that she took on.
Guru Sridevi Thirumalai provided the Nattuvangam (taal/beat) for the event. Event photography was done by Jeyakumar Satyamoorthy while video recording/streaming was enabled by Ajai Thirumalai and Babu Pandurangan. The makeup was done by Amrita Ajai Thirumalai.
The program was MCed by Aarushi's sister, Nishka Pant.
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