It was a thoughtful tribute to the guru who guided her first footsteps in dance. In “Swarna”, Geeta Chandran went down memory lane re-creating all that her late guru Swarna Saraswathy had taught her with diligent dedication.
The medley of Swarajati, padam so reminiscent of the ancient Thanjavur Devadasi style made for an exceptional ‘angika’ abhinaya in which Geeta excelled. Very popular dance episodes like the impish Krsna stealing and hiding the gopis’ clothes while they are in the pond (to the song, ‘sarisijakshulu jalakamadaga…’) were treated to layered emotive expressions both through hastha (gesticulation) and mukhabhinaya (facial). Unlike the present day where racy footwork and abhinaya take the cake, in Geeta’s repertoire, there was this unhurried pace where each emotion was delineated to its fullest extent, delving into the stratum as the lines of the song unfolded; where the dancer followed the idiom ‘yatho hastha tatho drishti..’ to a T, concentrating on the clarity of the mudra she was showing and a footwork that scaled the three-cycles of speed (tri-kalai) in gradation. Her dance opened the doors of the forgotten era where art was an involved process of projecting one’s persona through the medium with devotion being the underlying sentiment.