Dance Reviews : Ranganiketan Cultural Troupe

From the northeastern frontier of India, right next to Myanmar (Burma), comes a company called Ranganiketan, specializing in performance traditions belonging to the state of Manipur.

Saturday’s program at Robert Frost Auditorium in Culver City ranged from contemporary dance solos based on literary classics (“Gita Govinda” and “Mahabharata”) to demonstrations of an ancient martial art (thang-ta) using axes and scimitars.

Cultural influences from the Indian subcontinent, Himalayas and Far East seem to blend in everything from the men’s drum dances (with the musicians playing while executing hopping steps and even barrel turns, sometimes on their haunches) to the women’s “Kubak Ishei,” in which rhythmic clapping, swaying and one-legged balances heightened a series of vocal solos.

Closely resembling the Filipino “Tinikling,” the tribal dance “Kabui Kit-Lam” featured two dancers stepping between (and barely avoiding) long bamboo poles rapidly clapped together and against the floor. The temple festival dance “Lai Haraoba” showed a line of women delicately swiveling, sinking and gesturing (their hands tracing intricate curves in front of them) while a line of men behind performed bolder versions of the same motions.

The most exquisite Ranganiketan export, however, was easily “Vasanta Ras,” a classic ritual depicting the god Krishna interacting playfully with milkmaids. Accompanied by flute, drum, tiny cymbals and a woman’s singing, it definitively reflected the humor, refinement and spirituality of the Manipuri people.

In their layered short-sleeved tops over stiff, wide, gleaming, bell-like skirts, these milkmaids looked like nothing else on Earth, and, showering Krishna with flower-petals, they created a memorably joyous dance spectacle.