‘Facets of Siva’ Pays Tribute at Irvine Barclay

Ramaa Bharadvaj and Uma Suresh bill themselves as “the dancing twins of South India.”

Students and teachers of both the Bharatha Natyam and Kuchipudi styles of dancing, the Orange County-based duo has spent several years developing and producing “Facets of Siva,”a devotional pageant to various aspects of the Hindu Lord of the Dance. The work was first shown in Madras last summer.

Sunday evening at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, the sisters offered their compilation of danced and dramatic items, to recordings of South Indian music and sacred poetry especially made for them in Madras.

Each woman has a daughter: Swetha Bharadvaj, 10, and Priya Suresh, 11, are extraordinarily skilled youngsters who were given the bulk of the program’s pure dance numbers. Barefoot, in the glorious silk costumes that make Indian dance events such a visual feast, the two tiny dancers restore one’s faith in the ability of the human race to communicate its finest accomplishments to the younger generation.

Indian classical dance carries, and transmits, a much heavier freight of metaphysical and devotional content than does Western theater dance.

The program (which ran more than three hours, including introductory narration, a concluding address and presentations of awards to local business people who supported the production) interpolated a great deal of explanation with the presentation of short, danced miracle plays, in which the choreography demonstrated, according to the program, “the correct way for the mortal to interact with the Supreme.”

Ramaa Bharadvaj took the male role of Siva, except during one melodramatic scene in which she appeared as the hunter Kannappar, who plucks out his eyes in an attempt to restore the sight of Siva. Uma Suresh danced Sakthi, the creative aspect of Divinity usually pictured as female. In one scene, Suresh played Nandanar, a humble believer whose devotions cause a stone bull--here rendered in painted cardboard--to move.

The effort to educate threatened occasionally to swamp the emotional impact of the dancing.

There were slide presentations of credits and Indian sacred sites, altars cut out of the carefully painted backdrops, and a shower of blossoms, some of which drifted loose ahead of schedule. Missing was the interplay between dancers and onstage musicians, though the quality of the recording was certainly adequate.

Whereas the sisters seemed intent on communicating religious significance and the power of faith in their dancing, the daughters explored the rhythmic complexity of Indian chanting and percussion, flashed their bright eyes and twirled their bejeweled forms in a completely absorbing demonstration of the power of movement.

* “Facets of Siva” will be performed at 6:30 p.m. March 30 at the Don Powell Theatre at San Diego State University. Information: (619) 259-2051.