Page 2 / MORE ART NEWS, REVIEWS AND THINGS TO DO : Bodies Eclectic : Indian Dancer Hopes Irvine Performance Is an International Incident

Indian dancer Ramya Harishankar could rest safely on her laurels.

She was a recipient of a Choreographer’s Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, from 1993 through 1997. She won the 1993 Lester Horton Dance Award from the Dance Resource Center of Los Angeles.

She’s been teaching dance at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa since 1992. She’s the only exponent of the South Indian dance form Bharata Natyam on the “Center on Tour’ program sponsored by the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

But Harishankar is branching out and collaborating with other companies representing very different dance traditions and cultures.

She and her Irvine-based Arpana Dance Company will appear at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Irvine Barclay Theatre with the L.A. Ole Flamenco Dance Company, the Mojacar Flamenco Jazz Trio and the Pouian Music Conservatory, which plays classical and contemporary Persian music.

“The idea is not just to work with other people, to learn from them and experience firsthand their different cultures, but also to give each of the groups a chance to display their own talents and art forms,” Harishankar said. “There are pieces in which the groups will work together and pieces [presented individually] by each group.”

She calls the concert “Triveni: An Ocean of Harmony,” a title taken from an Indian word for the point where three major rivers in India come together before plunging into the ocean, “culminating in an ocean of harmony.”

The whole program will be danced to live music. In addition to the Arpana musicians, L.A. Ole founder Katerina Tomas and her ensemble will dance to music by Mojacar guitarist Stephen Dick and percussionist Fernando Diez. The Pouian Music Conservatory will feature brothers Freydoon and Siamak Pouian.

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The musicians and dancers have been working together on their program since June.

“I was hesitant to try anything like this for many years,” Harishankar said. “Bharata Natyam is a structured dance form. You do it in a sitting, half-bending posture, and it’s done to a certain kind of music. It’s hard to do swaying kinds of things in that posture that would go with the sway of the other music. It’s taken me a while to get to this point.”

The goal, however, is for their collaborations to remain true to the individual art forms, all of which are long on history and tradition.

“We are all committed to the integrity of each other’s art forms, so we don’t want to end up looking like Persian dance or flamenco.”

Net proceeds of the concert will go to the Orange County chapter of the American Red Cross.

Last Thanksgiving, Harishankar gave a concert with a Japanese taiko drumming group and a jazz-fusion group. She hopes to do collaborative concerts every year.

“There’s a lot more to learn,” Harishankar said. “We are so fortunate to live in this area, to have practically every culture and art form represented. So why not take advantage of that?”

* The Arpana Dance Company will present “Triveni: An Ocean of Harmony” on Saturday at 7 p.m. at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive. $14-$50. (949) 854-4646.