Muralidharan to present dance performance dedicated to rare thalams

I’ve been composing songs set to these thalams for the past 20 years, and now I’d like to invite dancers for a competition to see who can choreograph a piece the best to one of the rarer thalams,” begins Madurai R Muralidharan. The singer-composer-mridangam player, who has 120 music albums to his credit, says his love for rhythm and knowledge on it led to him creating this competition.

Additionally, a three-day dance festival titled Dhimahi has been organised by Muralidharan to showcase the beauty of rhythm in classical music and dance. Compositions of items like pushpanjali, alaripu, jathiswaram, varnam, thillana and padam — that form a traditional margam — set to a variety of five unusual thalams like Tisra jathi dhruva, Chaturasra jathi dhruva, Kanda jathi dhruva, sankeerna jathi madhyama and Kanda jathi madhyama will be performed.

“I presented a show a few months ago, which  comprised four margams and that came in Guinness, India and Asian Book of Records because it was a first-of-its-kind performance. This time, I’m attempting for five margams,” he tells DTNext. 

The five pieces will be performed by two of Muralidharan’s students, his daughter Kavya and two dancers from abroad, who train under other teachers. While Shobana will be inaugurating this festival on November 23,  Anita Guha has agreed to preside as the chief guest. Apart from the students, two guest dancers will be enacting their own choreographies on each day to Muralidharan’s compositions. Rukmini Vijayakumar, Srekala Bharath, Parvathi Ghantasala, Lavanya Shankar, Jayakrishna and Uma Murali are some of them.

He adds, “As for the dance competition, for the past 10 days we’ve received many entries. My team has sent the dancers who wished to participate a recording of one of my songs, they choreographed it, recorded a video of them dancing and sent it to us. 

We’re acquiring fresh entrants until November 18. The best entry —male and female — will be adjudged the winner on the final day of three-day dance festival. All the entries will be posted on Facebook as well.” To participate in the contest, write to dhimahi2018@gmail.com.