Rasavikalpam, a 10 day dance festival and Workshop: A report

Rasavikalpam, a ten day dance festival was organized by Kerala Sangeetha Nataka Academy at four different venues in Kerala, India on the first week of November 2013. The dance festival also conducted workshops at the different venues by eminent dancers. The workshop was organized for Indian classical dance forms kathak, bharathanatyam and kuchipudi. The course directors were Sreelatha Vinod, the renowned Bharathanatyam dancer;  Manju Bhargavi, the famous Kuchipudi dancer and Prasanth Shah, an outstanding male kathak dancer. The workshops were conducted in the morning followed by classical dance performances by artists in the evening. The different venues of Rasavikalpam dance festival were Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum), Thrissur (Trichur), Kozhikode (Calicut) and Palakkad (Palghat).

Thiruvananthapuarm witnessed the festival at vyloppilly samskrithi bhavan. The program was organized here by KSNA(Kerala Sangeetha Nataka Academy) in association with the Soorya and DTPC(District Tourism Promotion Council). Soorya is a non-profitable organization for Indian Classical Dance, Music and theatre. In Thiruvananthapuram the program was called Parampara dance festival. The opening of the performance was by Aparna Ramaswamy, a senior bharathanatyam dancer and choreographer from USA. Here the festival was from November-01- 2013 to November-11-2013. Kerala Sangeetha Nataka Academy auditorium was the venue at Thrissur. Kathak performance by Rajendra Gangani was the initial performance here. At Kozhikode, the Rasavikalpam dance festival was organized in association with Navarasam public charitable centre, Chavara cultural trust and Sadhbhavana world school. The odissi dance performance by Geethanjali Acharaya at Devagiri CMI Public School marked the beginning of the dance festival at Kozhikode. The opening performance at Palakkad was by Archana Narayanamurthy (Bharathanatyam). The festival was organized as a second phase of Swaralaya dance and music festival 2013 at Palakkad. The Mercy college auditorium was the venue.

 Mythili Prakash (Bharathanatyam), Nair sisters-Veena & Dhanya(Bharathanatyam), Rajashree Warrier(Bharathanatyam), Meenakshi Srinivasan(Bharathanatyam), Seema Iyer (Bharathanatyam), Shwetha Prachande(Bharathanatyam), Sruthi Jayan (Bharathanatyam), Divya Devagupatapu(Bharathanatyam) and Aparna Vinod(Bharathanatyam) were other performers. In addition to these artists, Dr. Draupathy along with Dr.Padmini performed a dance drama at Soorya Parampara festival held at Thiruvananthapuram. The whole festival was co-ordinated by Sreelakshmi Govardhanan, the Kuchippudi dancer from Thrissur.

Kerala Sangeetha Nataka Academy is an autonomus institution by Government of Kerala headed by Soorya Krishna Murthy as the chairman. The institution headquatered at Thrissur, Kerala, India has an aim to promote the art and culture. It works in collaboration with the Sangeetha Nataka Academy at New Delhi, India.