Sangeet Natak Akademi organized a major festival of Bharatanatyam at Ravindra Kalakshetra, Bangalore, from 23 November to 1 December 2002 featuring Bharatanatyam artistes of Karnataka. There were performances by dancers, both young and senior, in the evening and lecture-demonstrations by gurus with their disciples during the morning sessions. The event was a part of the series of Bharatanatyam festivals planned by the Akademi in different regions of the country with a view to making an assessment of standards of training and performance in the field of Bharatanatyam and identifying committed teachers for future measures of support. Similar events will follow in Tamil Nadu and other regions where Bharatanatyam is widely practiced. The festival was inaugurated by Shrimati Mrinalini Sarabhai, Padma Bhushan and Fellow of Sangeet Natak Akademi.

The morning session of presentations by the gurus was inaugurated on 24 November by the eminent guru and Akademi Awardee, Prof. U.S. Krishna Rao. The event was organized in collaboration with the Department of Kannada and Culture, Government of Karnataka.

In nine days of the festival, over a hundred dancers and fifty dance teachers participated, including several eminent names from Karnataka. Besides Prof. U.S. Krishna Rao, Shri H.R. Keshava Murthy and Smt. Pratibha Prahlad were among the participants. The eminent Bharatanatyam artiste and Akademi Awardee, Smt. Alarmel Valli, came from Tamil Nadu to perform in the festival on the concluding day. To interact with the participating artistes several observers and experts from south India attended the event.

The festival brought together the entire community of Bharatanatyam artistes of celebration together with rasikas of the dances.

The festival proved to be a significant step in reasessing the current scenario in the field of Bharatanatyam.

The Programme follows:

23 November 2002

Inaugration : Keerthi Ramagopal, Ranjani Ganeshan, Pratibha Prahlad, Uma Rao Group)

24 November 2002

Karupa Phadke, Shubha Dhananjaya, Sridhar/Anuradha, M.R. Keishnamurthy Group

25 November 2002

Ashok Kumar/Prakash Naidu/Pulikesi/Nagesh/Sudheer, Suman Nagesh, Radhika Nandakumar Radha Sridhar Group

26 November 2002

Priyamvada Murli, Praveen Kumar/Sathyanarayana Raju/Subhashini Vasant Rangashree, Revathi Narasimhan Group

27 November 2002

Navia Natarajan, Soundraya, Padmaja Suresh, Padmini Rao Group

28 November 2002

Laxmi Bai, Seshadri Iyengar, Preethi Sunderaj, Hamsa Moily Tosniwal, Poornima Ashok, K. Ramamurthi Rao Group

30 November 2002

Ajay Vishwanathan/Chandrika Narayan, Chetna Radhakrishna, Kiran Subramanyam/Sandhya Kiran Padmini Ravi, Lalitha Srinivasan Group

1 December 2002

Subha Patwardhan, Lakshmi Gopalaswamy, Alarmel Valli, Bhanumathi Group.