DANCE REVIEW : Classical Indian Art Form Comes to Irvine

With a self-effacing modesty that is commendable or lamentable, depending on one’s point of view, Ramya Harishankar, artistic director of the Arpana Dance Company, participated minimally in a program of Bharata Natyam, the classical dance idiom of southern India, by the company Friday at the Irvine Barclay Theatre.

The result? Essentially a school recital program that, however valuable for giving the more than 50 students stage experience, raised troubling questions about the propriety of presenting young dancers-in-training in this rich, difficult art form to a paying public.

Additionally, the scope of the program, entitled “Uthsava: A Glorious Celebration,” a survey of Indian festivals held throughout the calendar year, seemed unnecessarily ambitious. It could succeed in offering only a cursory view of these religious and social events since many of them are measured by days and nights. Even in a program lasting almost three hours, a sense of merely sampling the riches proved inevitable.

When Harishankar did participate, she tended to minimize her involvement. In the inevitably sketchy presentation of the wondrous “Ramayana,” for instance, she took the part of King Janaka, father of Sita, rather than the central role itself.

In the opening prayer and invocation to Ganesha, as the beneficent goddess Lakshmi in the festival of lights (“Deepavali”), as the woman bereft of her beloved in the carnival of colors (the “Holi” festival) and as the mother of Lord Krishna in the birthday celebration of this incarnation of God, Harishankar emphasized the expressive aspects of the art form with earnest sweetness.

These are elements communicated essentially through gestures, facial expressions and body postures, however, and do not involve rapid or complex footwork. While Bharata Natyam makes much of these elements, a program is usually balanced with more examples of pure dance as well. Harishankar herself did not offer such a piece until the “Thillana” at the very end of the program.

As a dancer, she proved more lyric than dramatic, more spongy than crisp and explosive in movement, but admirable were her ability to isolate one part of the body from another and her effortless lightness in quick, sidestepping jumps. It would have been interesting to have seen more of her.

The company of students, ranging from tots to teen-agers to women possibly in their early 20s, looked well-trained and disciplined. The unidentified woman who portrayed Rama seemed especially promising.