‘Nishakaanti’, a Kathak performance about the glory of night choreographed by Abhimanyu Lal and Vidha Lal of AV Dance Company was held at the Indian Habitat Center, New Delhi recently. The choreographers attempted to bring out the pixels of ‘night’ from a perspective of immense beauty and bloom and wrapped it around with the fibre of Kathak. A set of five compositions, representing various expressions of the ‘night’, were performed by Abhimanyu and Vidha.
From romance to a mother’s tender love for her baby, the performances used expressional aspects of Kathak to showcase the various moods of the night. The moon, flowers like Nishagandhi and lotus that bloom at night, Abhisarikanayika (
The performance began with ‘Padma Kanti’. This composition is a benedictory invocation to Lord Vishnu, the one who bestows upon the beautiful flower lotus that blooms at night; which was ultimately the theme of the evening. ‘Indu Kanti’ followed, wherein the dancers showed us a Mughal facet to the beauty of the night woven with some beautiful shayaris. The third composition, ‘Innocense’ was an expressional number. Here, the dancer took the lines from beautiful poetry written by Surdas and showed a different facet of the glory of the night – motherly love. In the next composition, ‘Abhisar Shringar’, the dancers created a world of their own with the figments of love, passion and romance. With this final piece for the glorification of the night, ‘Swapna Kanti’, the dancers leapt into the world of dreams with a Tarana – a style of singing in the Hindustani classical music. The Tarana created a crescendo with a notion of a dream to reach an ultimate level of boost by flying high.
Abhimanyu and Vidha who are disciples as well as son and daughter-in-law of Sangeet Natak Akademi Awardee Guru Geetanjali Lal of Jaipur Gharana are ‘A’ grade artists from Delhi Doordarshan and empanelled artists of I.C.C.R, Delhi. They have performed extensively in major dance festivals in India and abroad.
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