Spandha School of dance and creative arts in Acton, MA has been conducting several dance performances to expose children to various dance forms and to motivate the dancers to present new creations in the field of dance. In the dance series several passionate and talented artists have performed enthralling the audience with their talent. The series started with a Bharathanatyam dance recital by Smt. Sangita Raghunathan in March 2012, whose neat and graceful dance captivated the audience. She performed a Pushpanjali, Mahaganapathim- Kriti, Mishra chapu Allarippu, Maiyya Mori and Aadiya paadam. This was followed by a dance performance by Smt. Ranjani Saigal who is so well known in our New England community. She mesmerized the audience with her adaptation of Savitri- Satyavan. Her presentation and demonstration was very well received by our young audience who were so amazed at her powerful representation of the Death God.

Following this was dance presentation by Sandhya Reddy- Bharathanatyam, Suman Adisesh- Bharathanatyam and Purva Kulkarni- Kathak. We started the beginning of the new season with a Bollywood night by Arti Desai who got us all dancing to the popular Bollywood numbers. This was followed by another scintillating Odissi performance by Mouli- Pal. She started her recital with Saraswati Vandana followed by Ashtapadi, which was the highlight of the event. Her portrayal of the character of a dejected lover was completely justified. She was able to relate very well to the young dancers answering all their questions with at most patience. Her dance was truly divine.

Our humble apologies to all these great artists for not writing a complete article about their splendid performances.  

Latest performance in this series was a Kuchipudi Recital by Smt. Prafulla Vellury.  One of the young dancers of Spandha School of dance, Sanjana Krishna wrote this article about her captivating performance.

Kuchipudi Performance by Prafulla Valury
Sanjana Krishna (Age 11 years)

On March 1, the multi-talented Prafulla Velury treated an audience of about 100 children and adults to a scintillating performance of Kuchipudi. She started the evening with a prayer invocation on the Natuvangam thanking Goddess Bala Thirupara Sundari, the deity in the town of Kuchipudi from where this dance form originated. Smt Prafulla followed this with a Javali, Parulanna mata namma vaddu that captivated the audience for not only her beautiful portrayal of Krishna and the lady’s separation from Krishna but also for her remarkable live rendition of the accompanying song, it showed her remarkable abilities as both a dancer and singer.

The next piece was the famous Kirtana, Margadha manimaya Chela by Oothukkadu Venkatasubba Iyer where she mesmerized the audience with her beautiful portrayal of Krishna and his pranks and it seemed like the whole story was coming to life in front of you. She used great facial expressions and mudras to convey the emotions very effectively and spun her body around to portray the different characters. She saved the best for the last where she continued the Kirtana by balancing on a brass plate and showed great mastery of footwork as she moved throughout the floor.

The performance concluded with a vote of thanks followed by a great Q&A session. She answered several questions ranging from how long it took her to master the dance on the brass plate to origins of Kuchipudi and differences between Bharathanatyam and Kuchipudi.

We offer special thanks to Spandha School of Dance and our guru Smt. Suman Adisesh for organizing this beautiful show and giving us the students of the school an excellent opportunity to see a great artist at such close quarters and the entire performance was a great inspiration to all of us.

Here is a link to the glimpses of the performances we’ve had so far:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UT5fxv27s_4

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