Under the auspices of the Ekal Vidyalaya foundation of USA, a fund raiser dance recital named, "Natya Madhuram", was rendered by Smt Prakruti Mavanur, Smt Jeyanthi Ghatraju and the students of Jeyanthi's Natyanjali School of dance on the 29th of April at the palatial Keefe Technical School auditorium in Framingham, MA.

The program began with the traditional Panchamurthy Anjali, a prayer seeking the blessings of five deities, set in Gambheera Nattai ragam and Adi talam.Following that was the Swarajathi in ragam Kamas, (a selection from the Temple Album by Sri Raghunath Manet) rendered in elegant style by Jeyanthi. Next, Prakruti portrayed important sequences from the epic Ramayana in the Bhavayami varnam as narrated by Sri Swati Thirunal Maharaja. Next to follow was a brief and inspiring video presentation on the Ekal Vidyalaya project. This was followed a concise report on Ekal activities embedded with vital details by Dr. Shalini Marsharamani.

Continuing the recital, Jeyanthi enthralled the audience with her Shiva padam (Shankara Shrigiri) in Hamsanandhi ragam, depicting the cosmic dance of Lord Shiva at the Chidambaram temple in South India. The highlight of this item was an interesting jugalbandhi among the trio - nattuvangam artist, the percussionist and the dancer, which kept the audience spell bound.Jagaddodharana, a composition of Saint Puranadaradasa in Misrakapi ragam was the next to come. Here Prakruti described adeptly the experiences of mother Yashoda with her divine child Sri Krishna. This was followed by the popular folk song "tandanana" of Saint Annamacharya .The artists were the young students of Natyanjali. It was a beautiful rendition, in which the young dancers,  in their colorful costumes danced to the twists and turns of the choreography emphasizing social equality.At the end of the item, there were repeated cheers from the audience.

The grand finale, Thillana, was composed by Smt Renganayaki Jayaraman in the delightful Desh ragam. Jeyanthi and her students, Rehana and Anusha immersed themselves completely in this dance of joy with intricate rhythmic variations and exquisite poses. The recital concluded with the conventional Madhyamavathi Mangalam. A special feature of the program was the lively orchestra comprising of  Smt. Jayshree Bala Rajamani doing the nattuvangam, Dr. Maitreyi Sharma (vocal), Sri Gaurishankar Chandrashekar on the mridangam, Dr. Revathi Ramaswamy on the veena and Dr. Suresh Mathur on the flute. All these renowned artists exhibited mastery in their own area while providing able support to the dancers.

 The Ekal Vidyalaya project is embarked on a massive scale with the divine motive of lighting the lamp of literacy in the least privileged tribal villages in India. It envisages manning each school by the locally trained teachers in the villages. This massive program aims to establish as many as 100,000 schools by 2011 mainly through public contributions. A hectic but noble task indeed! And so, no wonder the audience felt immensely satisfied that they contributed their share to the literacy project.

 The coordinator of the project for the New England area while expressing on the sumptuous fund from the recital said "the overall goal was to create awareness among the people about the project and that was greatly achieved through this dance program". Overall, many in the audience commented that it was a program well-organized and executed.

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