‘Today we have many dancers, but few artistes’

It has been close to five decades since she took to performing. Dancer, researcher and writer Lakshmi Viswanathan, who has carried forward the abhinaya tradition and made it her forte, continues to push boundaries. 

Set to receive the Ustav Nritya Ratna from Utsav, in association with Krishna Gana Sabha, on May 1, it is a homecoming of sorts. It was the same sabha that had honoured her early in her career with the Nritya Chudamani in 1975. 

Looking back at her journey of artistic pursuits, Lakshmi is gratified, as she holds her own among a sea of dancers on the burgeoning stage. However, there are two sides to it, she says. “The bright side of it is that many dancers are being trained today. It has become a community activity and more people seem interested in it. But the down side is that you cannot expect all to become serious performing artistes. The numbers don’t match there. You can be a good dancer but a great artiste is something else. Proficiency 

doesn’t mean excellence.” She also rues that despite huge dance heritage, we don’t have infrastructure to compete globally. “Having said that, since the early 70s, I have done productions through my own initiatives relying on my own infrastructure,” she says. 

With intensive training when she was in Class one, Lakshmi, who hails from an artistic family, came under the guidance of Kausalya, her first dance teacher. Later, she was under the tutelage of Kanchipuram Ellappa Pillai in the Thanjavur bani and learnt Kuchipudi from legendary Vempati Chinna Satyam. 

A proponent of expressions or abhi naya , she calls it her conscious attempt to reinvent as any artiste would. “I did it in two streams — one in group shows and interaction with young dancers. It is like painting on a large canvass. Through Abhinaya , I am looking at compositions that are new or not performed earlier,” she adds. Her theatrical production on life of the legendary MS Subbulakshmi — in Vachika Abhinaya, where she speaks as the Carnatic vocalist — premiered at MS’ centenary in Delhi. 

Traversing a wide path of dance, literature and research, Lakshmi continues to explore the vast space. Her upcoming work will look at women’s contribution to Tamil culture. “Culture doesn’t mean only dance and music, it also includes literature and philosophy and the way of life. These are projects from which I can learn as well,” she says. 

Being a seasoned artiste, which explains how she took the recent Padma Award confusion in her stride, she says, “Everyone had seen the list in Delhi and the news was on a reputed regional news channel for a whole day; it couldn’t have happened if my name was not mentioned. It is an Agatha Christie mystery and am not capable of unraveling governmental mystery.”