Shantala Shivalingappa's "Akasha," a program of new Kuchipudi solos, at Jacob's Pillow, July 4 through 7. It was at Jacob’s Pillow in the 1960s that I first saw examples of two dance styles that I’d never heard of: Odissi and Kuchipudi. Indrani, that beneficent performer and promulgator of Indian dance, was giving a master class and had brought with her two male dancers, each of them … [Read more...]
A Single Dance in Four Chapters
Shantala Shivalingappa has always been an artistic voyager. Trained in India’s classical Kuchipudi style (first by her mother, Savitry Nair, then by Vempati Chinna Satyam), she danced with an unbridled white horse in Bartabas’s equine spectacle Chimère. She played Ophelia in Peter Brooks’s production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Miranda in his The Tempest. She has performed with Pina Bausch’s … [Read more...]