Alarmel Valli recounts her poetic exploration in ‘The Forgotten Seed’

Alarmel Valli’s ‘The Forgotten Seed’ celebrated the dance-music-poetry link

Not all seeds that are pressed into the earth sprout. In ‘The Forgotten Seed’, a Bharatanatyam recital based on the works of Sangam poets that was presented by Alarmel Valli, seeds long lost in soil find root, even transforming into large trees. Shaped by the graceful artistry of the senior dancer, the poems became stories – and sites of protest or celebration.

Every piece presented in ‘The Forgotten Seed’ gave life to the invisible (drops of rain could be seen falling on an empty stage) or made the intangible real (flowers were heard loudly protesting the treatment they received from humans greedy for their perfume). Characters of diverse ages and contexts posed queries or shared their innermost feelings in voices equally wide-ranging. Dewy fresh creation to “cataclysmic destruction” (as described in the first piece), adolescent girls giggling over the new ways in which they were seeing their pesky childhood playmates, women choosing to express rage rather than waste away when betrayed in love – multiple images from the recital left imprints. Speaking of her “four decade long love affair with Sangam poetry,” Alarmel Valli recalls how it was her mother and maternal grandfather who drew her attention to this poetic era.

When Alarmel was 16, her mother had shared a verse that would become the foundational piece of the work, pointing out how it seemed to be “written for dance.” Though that piece was not presented in this recital, she holds that poem which describes the intimate connection between humans and Nature — almost likening a tree to a sibling — to be her favourite.

Alarmel quotes A. K. Ramanujam to describe the significance of Sangam poetry: “In their antiquity and in their contemporaneity, there is not much else in any Indian literature equal to these quiet and dramatic Tamil poems, A. K Ramanujam has written,” she says. “Many of them are secular poems that speak of the all-encompassing nature of the divine. They display an astonishing link with their environment, even using the landscapes in story-telling. Their depiction of emotions makes them richly metaphoric and sensuous. Their images are tactile. They have a sense of humour,” she adds.

She had “the luxurious experience of no deadlines” while working with her musical collaborator. “This opportunity, older dancers had,” she says, “to work for days with a musician. It was a joyous, unhurried experience. We soaked in the poetry until we both could flow in the same stream of consciousness. Today, we (musicians and dancers) are in parallel streams because of time shortage.”

Every piece from ‘The Forgotten Seed’ is thus marked by rituals of collaboration and reflection that are not easy to come by in modern creative environments pressured, among other factors, by social media, she adds. For Alarmel, the phrase, ‘the forgotten seed’ is a layered metaphor that represents “the seamless link among dance, poetry and music.” She viscerally experienced the innate connection between them when she watched “Balamma” (the legendary Balasaraswati) dance and started learning music from “Mukta Amma” (legendary musician T. Mukta). “Studying music with Mukta Amma was a revelation. I suddenly became much more aware of the pauses between words, the spaces between notes and the long stretched out silences. Watching Balamma dance, I realised that abhinaya — the interpretative aspect of our dance — is not just about portraying a text or a theme using hand gestures and facial expressions, rather it is equally about allowing the entire body to listen to the music and to try to make the music visible,” she says.

Her idea of dance is one where “ideally speaking, we can see the music and hear the dance.” Based on the works of poets such as Kalidasa, the Tanjore Quartet and Subramania Bharati, most of the pieces from ‘The Forgotten Seed’ were musically arranged by Prema Ramamurthy or Rajkumar Bharathi. Marked by meticulous sharing of credits to collaborators, ‘The Forgotten Seed’ effortlessly recounted an artiste’s journey of poetic exploration that dissolved in music and dance.