Indian dancer, choreographer
and teacher Ramya Harishankar of Irvine has long worked to foster appreciation
of classical dance of India. Her Arpana Dance Company, a group of
mostly teen-age women, performs at least annually in Orange County, as
does Harishankar.
But to better achieve her goals
of cross-cultural understanding, Harishankar also has been active as a
presenter of other companies. Her nonprofit Arpana Foundation
is sponsoring a performance tonight at the Irvine Barclay Theatre that
sounds, on paper at least, particularly interesting.
Called "Purush _ Expressions
of Man" ("purush" means "man" in Sanskrit), the concert features five men
trained in Indian classical dance on the same program with two members
of the modern dance Battery Dance Co. New York. The Indian dancers, C.V.
Chandrasekhar, Keertik Nair, Arjun Misra, Vithal Pasumarthy and Sasidaran
Nair, will perform four styles of Indian classical dance.
During the program's second
half, Battery dancers Kevin Predmore and John Freeman will do an Indian-inspired
modern dance created by Battery artistic director Jonathan Hollander. Hollander
attended the University of California, Irvine, and went to India as a Fullbright
scholar. He conceived the program to highlight male dancing in Indian and
Western dance traditions. Indian music and the fusion of Western and Indian
music that accompanies Hollander's piece will be played live.
Harishankar said there is a
renaissance in male dancing in India.
"In the past five years, there
seems to a be revival in male dancing. This is kind of the beginning of
that, and they have put together this group of senior dancers doing different
styles."
The program had its premiere
in August at the Music Academy in Madras, India, and was performed at the
Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors Festival. The dancers are on a national tour.
The Irvine performance begins at 6 p.m. Tickets are $12 and $20 and can
be purchased by calling (714) 854-4646 or (714) 740-2000.
