DANCE REVIEW : ‘Women’ Falls Short of Epic Ambitions

IRVINE — Los Angeles dancer and choreographer Viji Prakash continues to push the boundaries of the South Indian Bharata Natyam dance form in her problematic “Women in the Mahabharata,” which was presented Sunday at the Irvine Barclay Theatre.

Before the three-hour dance-drama veers off into trying to make contemporary connections to the Hindu epic, it dwells on the goddess Ganga and other female characters that other versions sometimes slight. But it also attempts to keep the core story of the 100,000-verse poem coherent, an ambitious effort that necessarily must shift the focus off the women.

Hard enough just being faithful to the original, but the causal links Prakash then attempts to make with modern warfare, pollution, wife-beating--and the nurturing power of women--are tenuous and unfocused. But her commitment is clear when she ends with a plea from the stage for greater recognition of the “beauty and strength of womenkind” and a prayer, “Let there be joy in all our hearts.”

In such a sweeping perusal of this complex epic, the best that can be hoped for is the emotional amplification of certain scenes. Such was Prakash’s projection of Ganga’s heavenly bliss through facial expression and light, springy movement--even if the goddess murders her babies by throwing them into the Ganges. (There is a reason for this.)

To distinguish herself in roles as other characters, Prakash varied the tone of her movements: fierce and frightful as Draupadi cursing the men who have tried to strip her; shrinking into herself as Arjuna on the verge of the apocalyptic battle of Kurukshetra, then rising heroically in response to Arjuna’s enlightenment by Krishna.

Krishna in this scene was danced steadily and strongly by Lila Kamhout, who has studied with Prakash for about a decade.

Mirroring her mother’s movements in the opening invocation to Ganapati was the poised, talented 10-year-old Mythili Prakash, who also appeared as the young Bheeshma (aka Bhishma) and in other roles. The eight other members of the Shakti Dance Company tended to look ragged, unsteady in balances and uncertain in spatial relationship.

The performance was dedicated to Shubho Shankar, who died in September. Shubho, the son of Ravi Shankar, composed the lyric, layered score for the work. It was played and sung with varying degrees of security by vocalists Babu Parameshwaran, H.S. Nagaraja and Gopa Guha; and V.R. Chandra Shekar, mridangam; Sunil Kumar, flute; Krishna Kutty, violin, and Ramesh Kumar, tabla.