It was a delightful evening for music and dance patrons with the talented and versatile artist Dr. Vyjayanthimala Bali taking center stage, at the lecture-demonstration organized by MES Kalavedi, Malleswaram on June 18th.
Vyjayanthimala Bali with Saroja Devi (right), Bharathi Vishnuvardhan (left). Pic: Suja Sukumaran.
Vyjayanthimala kept her audience captivated with her amazing performance, vocals and commentary on the various dance segments. Her lec-dem had song compositions (like Ella arumaighalum and Arivenayya) with abhinaya and a brief explanation of the abhinaya padams.
She was accompanied by Anahita Ravindran on vocal, Gayathri Sashidharan on natuvanga, Shaktivel Muruganandam on mridangam and Chaitanya Kumar on flute.
The iconic dancer endearingly called ‘twinkle toes’ was trained by Guru Kittapa Pillai and the legendary D. K. Pattamal was her music guru. She quit acting in movies years back to focus on Bharatanatyam, at which she excelled. Her debut in Tamil movies started with Vazhkai made by M.V. Raman after which she blazed the silver screen with stellar performances in Bahar, Sangam, Devdas, Madhumati, Nagin, Gunga Jamuna and several more.
Iconic figures from yester-years Bharathi Vishnuvardhan, Shyamala Bhave, Maya Rao, and B Saroja Devi were in the audience, gracing the occasion.
MES Kalavedi organizes a cultural event on every third Saturday of the month at the MES College premises in Malleswaram giving an opportunity to both established as well as emerging artists in the field.
The programmes are open to public and have free admission. Kalavedi was started almost 15 years back when MPL Shastry, a music connoisseur founded a music and dance club. Since then several artists such as Semmanagudi Srinivasa Iyer, Lalgudi Jayaraman, Doraiswamy Iyengar have graced the stage.
"The idea was to encourage students of MES College to perform and give them exposure. Now we have expanded and have several artistes from all over performing for us,” says T T Srinivasan, the renowned violinist and Director of the Science and Cultural Center for MES Institutions who has been instrumental in organizing the events. Vimala Rangachar, the founder member and President of the MES Institutions heads the Kalavedi, and is actively involved in its functioning.
MES Kalavedi upcoming programmes
16th July: Jugalbandhi of Hindustani and Carnatic music by Geetha Ramananda on Veena and Jayanth Kumar Das on Sitar at MES College for Arts, Science & Commerce, Malleshwaram.
‘Yuvajanaothsava’ the annual youth festival is organized from all the 13 MES institutions in Bangalore, in December every year.
The ‘MPL Shastry Cultural Festival’ is organized in September with performances by artists in the Instrumental, Hindustani vocal, Carnatic vocal and dance categories.
MES Kalavedi: Ph:23341225, email: violintts at gmail dot com.