Happy streak of luck
Haiku and expressive dance
A blissful evening
It was an evening of haiku poems and
interpretive dance. Besides making me experiment with poor unpoetic haiku to
capture the pleasurable experience of listening to Kala Ramesh present her own
haiku poems, Sunday the 18th of February 2018, at Our Sacred Space, took me on
an aesthetic journey way beyond my own reckoning.
The graphic imagery of the poetic form of
haiku and the impressionistic dance of the three Bharata Natyam dancers,
Vrushali, Rama and Manasi sensitively interpreted their visual impression of
the haiku in well imagined and choreographed dance, capturing with empathy the
allusive imagery of the five elements on which Kala Ramesh’s haiku poems were
based.
Haiku, as we thought it was, was supposed
to be a poem in three lines in seventeen syllables or less. But most of what I
listened to was much shorter than seventeen syllables. I counted. But the haiku
worked. They were authentic haiku. The poems were graphic and inspired and they
made me see and think and imagine (this is after I had stopped counting the
syllables and gave up my presuppositions). And how well they were expressed!
Kala Ramesh had divided her
poems as from her book of haiku and haibun, ‘beyond the horizons beyond’, into
five sections, ‘Panchabhutas’ the five elements. Ether (akash) associated with
sound. Air (vayu), sound and touch. Fire (agni), associated with sound touch
and sight. Water (jalam), sound, touch, sight and taste. Earth (prithvi),
sound, touch, sight, taste and smell.
Kala Ramesh read a few of her haiku and
haibun from each of these five sections of her book. Her poems were
supraliminal, evoking within us a response above
the threshold of sensory awareness, so our
own imagination could take us to the spaces that went beyond the brink
of perception while her words acted as guidelines.
And during the reading, to delineate the
space between the haiku, so that we knew that a new haiku was being read, a
brass bowl was ting’d like a bell by one of the dancers, this heightened the
experience of listening.
Kala Ramesh’s poems were graphic and
clear, and some were tacit and connotative, but all were thoughtful, elegant
and expressive. Here are few examples.
From Earth: Prithvi
his outstretched hand
pins that perfect note...
nirghuni bhajan
for Kumar Gandharva
spotlight ...
from within he draws
a lilting step
for Kelucharan Mahapatra
From Water: Jalam
monsoon!
the road home
rushing to meet me
From Fire: Agni
long day
a lizard up a brick wall
a limb
at a time
But
the Bharata Natyam dancers, Vrushali, Rama and Manasi, all from Pune where Kala
Ramesh lives too, were no less than Kala Ramesh’s haiku in their interpretation
of the five elements.
Their dance was artful, their movements graceful, and the
choreography was creative, intelligent and supremely artistic. The perfectly
chosen colours of their costumes; their impressions-in-dance of water, fire or
air; their flawlessly synchronised movements; their use of space and time
completely coordinated while they danced to music that they had selected that
went so well with the intention of the theme. It was so memorable that one
couldn’t easily get it out of one’s mind.
Some of the music they had chosen was -
for the opening, a serene piece on flute by Pravin Godkhindi. For Agni, they
had chosen a piece called ‘Space’ by Zakir Husain, they had also used a piece
by Vikram Ghosh, called ‘Grasshopper’, and then ‘Vande Mataram’, as superbly
interpreted by Revathi on violin. Vrushali, Rama and Manasi made a huge
impression for their clever, sharply defined interpretation of Kala Ramesh’s ‘haiku
of the elements’. Yes it was a memorable evening.
The best
things happen by happenstance
haiku &
imaginative dance
a rejuvenating
renaissance
Photographs: Vikram Chunduru
