HAIKU POEMS AND INTERPRETIVE DANCE

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