‘Divine’ Dances Tie Ancient Past With Present

Times like these sometimes call for dances of cosmic proportions.

Ramaa Bharadvaj’s program Friday at the Norton Simon Museum would under any circumstances have inspired awe, but it did the more so because aesthetic connection between classical Indian dance and current events was not avoided.

She encouraged her audience for “Darsan--Dances of the Divine” to visit the Norton Simon’s stunning, permanent collection of Chola bronzes before the performance, making us aware that her three new works had been inspired by images of the deities Ganesa, Krishna and Siva.

Squashing dwarves beneath their feet, swinging their raised legs across their bodies in dynamic defiance, the 10th century figures of Siva as Nataraja--master dancer of the universe--let you know that the cycle of destruction, preservation, and creation is indeed endless. These bronzes are old. The dances and stories they depict are even older.

After audience members returned upstairs to the Norton Simon Museum Theater, Bharadvaj asked them to consider the stage sacred. (This was the first time the Norton Simon had used it for dance, and the sightlines and amplitude of the intimate theater are ideal.) She gave it her apt blessing with “Invocation to Ganesa,” strewing imaginary petals before the path of the lumbering, elephant-headed god, danced by Swetha Bharadvaj.

But it was the “Dance of Krishna” and the concluding, “Palli Ezhuchchi--The Awakening,” both in the Bharatanatyam style, that really charged the place.

In “Krishna,” Bharadvaj’s student, an impressive 9-year-old prodigy, Medha Raj, teased excitement out of the air with a victory dance over the collapsed body of Swetha Bharadvaj as a polluting river demon.

In the vision of this confident child, Bharadvaj wanted us to see hope, alluding to the present national crisis in her program notes--and we did.

And in “The Awakening,” a solo for an arrestingly expressive Swetha as Siva Nataraja, we felt the full metaphoric impact of history’s relentless creation-and-destruction cycle, as she swung her leg across her body and ended in the exact pose of the Chola bronze seen earlier.

Remarks by esteemed Asian art scholar Pratapaditya Pal and the lighting design of Chris Flores enhanced the one-night-only program.