Telling stories through hand gestures of Bharatanatyam

“Stories by Hand, is the journey of a single woman seeking her identity through memories, taking hand gestures of Bharatanatyam as the basis for a storytelling, dance interweaving East and West, past and present and mythical and social stories. Bharatanatyam movements have always been in service of story, and while these were once devoted to sacred stories enacted by specially costumed young dancers in a temple, the elegant vocabulary of the codified hand gestures has proven over the ages to be a highly flexible one, with meanings that shift dramatically both with changes in their sequencing and in relation to the moving body,” she says.

The performance, having a more populist direction strips away the traditional trappings of the dance (costume, make-up, musical accompaniment) to create a more intimate and much less ceremonial experience. Preeti, a leading exponent in Bharatanatyam, says that the stories are intimate, personal, vulnerable, provocative and touch upon topics of displacement, identity and shifting spaces within our lives. 

“These stories evolve out of the interplay of hand gestures, the play of eyes and the stories I speak. The movements will create contingent spaces in which the stories can unfold. In effect, the dancer holds the figures of her stories up for the audience to inspect with their inner eyes, her gestures serving to make the invisible visible. 

Preeti will be performing on August 31, 7 pm onwards at  Museum Theatre, Egmore