Costumes that go into Indian dances

New Delhi: A common man differentiates between Odissi and Bharatnatyam through the dancer's dress; he may not understand the dance at all but through the costumes he can set one apart from the other, says costume designer Sandhya Raman.

Raman, who has worked with dancers of national and international repute like Mallika Sarabhai, Leela Samson among others, has illustrated her 40-year-long journey with Bharatnatyam dancer Geeta Chandran, in an ongoing exhibition titled "When the Pleats dance" at India International Centre here.

Based on the dancer's personal collection of costumes and jewellery designed by Raman, it traces the evolution of the dance form over four decades of this dancer-designer alliance.

"The exhibition is all about the dance and the costumes designed for it; how I have worked with her (Chandran) and developed the entire range of costumes with her," Raman says.

"As we put in so much of energy in making the costumes in the one and a half decade of our collaboration, the dancer also had her entire vision into it. As the dancer matured she, she also realized that it is very important to have a relook into the traditional costumes. Hence, the exhibition."

A Padamshri awardee, Geeta Chandran is a polymath artiste who is renowned for deep and composite understanding of the art of Bharatnatyam. She has the reputation of having evolved an atypical holistic style of classical dance that occasionally borders on the contemporary.

The exhibition captures this detour from the classical into the contemporary, while retaining the novelty of the dance form.

"It is very challenging and demanding to retain the originality of the dance form and being true to it because there is a certain look to it," Raman says. 

One of the costumes that stands out at the exhibition that is otherwise opulent with bright golden borders and belts, was a bland white ensemble with a red, orange and maroon tie-dye border.

The costume was worn by Chandran in one of her performances in 2012, "Gandhi: Warp & Weft."

Owing to the Gandhian theme, and the focus of the choreography being on khadi, the design, Raman says, was kept "minimalistic."

"I take the colours from what the theme of a performance has to depict them. Each colour goes with a theme," she says.

For "Seasons" performed in 2003, where Chandran wanted to create a message of hope in the desperate spiral of global warming, dramatic black costumes representing dark realities of global warming were designed, infused with shades of hope represented by a sinuous gold border outline that looked like the pieces of molten sun and rendered in a fusion spirit.

Because Bharatnatyam is a traditional dance form hailing from south of India, Raman says she has used Kanjivaram for all the stage performances, while rehearsals are done in cotton.

"If there is budget constraint then we do manage to do a simple assemblage of silk," the designer says.

Bharatnatyam is a rigorous dance that employs stretches and bends which makes use of pyjamas and essential requirements worn under a heavily gathered knee length skirt.

Making such costumes work while keeping the ethos of the dance together was one of the major challenges that Raman had to overcome.

"There are such fast and intense movements that designing costumes in a way that there were no retakes of the show was a challenge," she says.

In order to be a part of the process, Raman used to sit through all the rehearsals and observe the movements to understand what the dancer thought.

"Then I would dramatise the whole thing," she says.

The exhibition is set to continue till June 21.