Yanum – TAPAC Auckland, 16 March 2024: Review

 Yanum is a bewitching trance dance, channelled through ancient Tamil epic texts, and materialized into Present Time with a strong activist theme.

That is Artistic Director and choreographer Dr Bhuvana Kannan’s inspiration and vision for this performance.

The body is a creative force driving the production. The brain is the artists themselves and their conceptualization.

Without the body the brain is museum piece, and without the brain the body is a corpse. The performance contains elements both Surreal and Dada.

This is fully in the spiritual realm where the body is the conduit for the eternal and everlasting.

There has never been a time when you and I have not existed. Krishna to Radha.

It has taken well over two years of gestation to bring this project to fruition, with Producer Padma Akula bringing a lot of the creative processes together.

This is the ninth year of the Artham Dance Company, and this is the world premiere of Yanum.

The subtitle could be Ancient Thoughts Through Modern Lenses.

The source material are five great Tamil epics, written between the fifth and tenth century, collectively known as Aiyemperumkappigal.

Prior to the performance we are welcomed in by the call of a conch shell.

The stage is set as a study. A desk and many books piled on it to stage left.

Soothing Eastern melodic music is playing. The original music is from composers Karnan Saba and Ghatam Uma Shankar.

We meet Darshi (Darshna Ponnampalam) as the narrator of the dance. She is graceful and fluid in her movements, as she gravitates towards the books.

All the dancers are performing in the Bharatanatyam tradition, the oldest Indian classical dance form, and the State dance for Tamil Nadu.

With her to stage right is Seyorn (Seyorn Arunagirinathan), a companion and muse. He plays a Carnatic violin, in sync with the narrative unfolding and the dance as it progresses.

Immediately the themes of female empowerment and societal adversity and barriers are raised.

We hear heavy male voices reciting lines from the Epics. Darshi reacts to the ponderous weight of the pronouncements and comments on the harsh tone.

The authors were male, and living in ancient times where women’s roles were supposedly subservient and deferential.

She sees that there are five female protagonists representing the epics. They radiate their own feminine energy. The Anima as outlined by Jung, with male spiritual energy as Animus.

First to appear is Sweta Gopi as Kannagi, from the Silapathikaram epic. She appears voluptuous and sensual. Part of this dance depicts the burning of the city of Madurai.

Ambaree Deepak Rege is the character of Madhavi from the same epic. In the programme she is described as an emotionally liberated decision maker. She radiates a feminine charm with her poise which appears unruffled by mundane activities. You approach her with some trepidation. An Ice Maiden reminding us of Khaleesi from the Game of Thrones.

Athula Mohan appears as Manimegalai, the main protagonist of the same-named epic. Her journey in the ancient text was to break the cycle of death and rebirth. The dance has a certain hypnotic and soporific effect.

The same thing I experienced when listening to Buddhist priests lecturing on the physical aspect of the Bardo. Where we hear that deep incantatory male voice.

A mesmerising dance conveys it from a different path.

Niken Waloejo is the character Kundaleshki. Physical desires battle with spiritual quest and a wildness of spirit is conveyed.

Bhuvana Kannan (the creative director) embodies Valayapathi and may have the most fraught interpretation. Wildness becomes witchy and frantic. She grapples with a pregnancy.

I heard a few comments around me that the whole interpretation was political and activist.

I felt the dance was more nuanced than that, whilst evoking powerful ideas.

There was no ambiguity as to what a woman is in Yanum. This seems to be one of the most ridiculous tenets posed in recent times, where gender must be seen as constantly mutable.

My experience of India over the years has been one of great tolerance. Diverse in all aspects of religious tolerance, and of different ethnicities. And yet this is juxtaposed with the exact opposite, as the ongoing intermittent Hindu and Muslim conflagrations attest to.

Women occupy many roles in higher business endeavours and its huge bureaucracy. They are respected at the same time as there is a deep-seated behaviour of sexual violence and subjugation.

That these aspects co-exist side by side is a paradox that is at the heart of human behaviour. I regard India as a far more tolerant society than New Zealand, which is part of the New World. Being the youngest it is still a toddler in many respects.

I am Indian by genetics, but I was born in New Zealand. I am recognised as not Indian whenever I have been there. It is more in the intangible way you carry yourself. You move in a certain way which carries a code.

The most momentous changes to male and female relationships over the centuries occurred in the last one. Both crucially defined the Sixties as an artistic moment.

The first was the invention of the oral contraceptive. This liberated women from the physical restrictions from childbirth. The workforce was to change fundamentally.

The other was The Twist. The dance became singular. Partners separated.

At the core of how we interact between male and female, is sex and dance.

This is the core of politics and social behaviour too.

I reacted to the disciplined and enchanting dance performance of Yanum as the affirmation of ancient and powerful female energy. The necessary and vital Anima.

Rev. Orange Peel