Navaratri Festival Features Reimagined Indian Dance Epic

Wesleyan’s Navaratri Festival is one of the longest-running performance programs at the Center for the Arts (CFA), stretching back almost 50 years. The University’s 49th anniversary festival will celebrate the diversity of Indian music and dance Sept. 24 to 27.

CFA Director Joshua Lubin-Levy ’06 said that the festival has evolved over the years, continuing Wesleyan’s commitment to uplift South Indian culture and find new ways for these traditions to grow. “What is most striking to me about the festival is that each year, it really is a team project,” Lubin-Levy said. “It’s assembled by a committee of staff, faculty, students, and local leaders who believe in the kind of community this festival creates, of diasporic celebration and belonging that might take place on our campus but connects people from all over the region and the world."

This year’s festival will feature the Connecticut debut of husband-and-wife dance duo Srikanth Natarajan and Aswathy Srikanth, performing the New England premiere of Samavesha, their gender-bending reimagining of the classical Indian epic the Mahābhārata. One of the best flute artists in Indian classical music, Shashank Subramanyam will return to Wesleyan for the first time in a dozen years.

When he was six years old in the village of Melattur in Tamil Nadu, Natarajan started acting in the Bhagavata Mela dance drama—an annual ritualistic offering to Vishnu, one of the principal deities of Hinduism—that his father and his ancestors participated in. Two years later, he was introduced to Bharatanatyam, a classical dance style of South India. “As this tradition goes, only male dancers are allowed to perform,” Natarajan said.

By the age of 12, his teacher had started to train him in the heroine roles for the performance. “I was simultaneously doing male characters as well,” said Natarajan, who promised he would participate in his village’s festival every year. “It takes years to master this.”

Natarajan first started teaching Aswathy Srikanth as a Bharatanatyam student in Chennai 1999, and the duo started performing together in 2001. The couple currently lives in Kerala where they train students at the Nrityalaya School for Classical Dance and Music.

In Samavesha, which Natarajan said means “taking the role of the other,” they explore two characters from the Mahābhārata. “You always want to give it a twist, or present it a little differently,” Natarajan said of interpreting the content of the legendary poem. He performs the role of Brhannala, the disguised eunuch identity of the prince Arjuna, in female attire; while Srikanth performs the role of Shikandi, a princess who is re-incarnated as the male warrior Ambha, from a male perspective using the Mohiniyattam dance style. “We try to take the opposite and then see how best we can portray this in a very convincing way,” Natarajan said. “This was an interesting journey for us. This is something very close to our heart.”

Natarajan inaugurated the the Natyarangam dance festival in Chennai in 1994, and first performed the role of Arjuna there in 2009. He said there is a section of society that has a stigma around understanding and acceptance of who you are as a person, which makes their modern presentation in Samavesha, and the questions of gender and identity transformation, from the ancient poem relevant. “The trials and tribulations that one goes through in life today are exactly the same as what Arjuna went through in the Mahābhārata,” Natarajan said. “This is something that every one of us can connect to very easily.”

“Wesleyan is a dream place for anyone to perform,” Natarajan said. “I've always wanted to be a part of this Navaratri Festival.” The performance of Samavesha will be followed by a talkback with Professor of Dance, Global South Asian Studies, and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Hari Krishnan. Natarajan previously performed the Indian premiere of Uma, a solo work choreographed by Krishnan, at the Natya Darshan festival in Chennai in 2013.  

Similar to Natarajan, Shashank Subramanyam started performing at the age of six in 1984 and followed in the footsteps of his father in Bangalore, who also played the flute. “He wanted me to attempt another instrument,” Subramanyam said. Less than a year into violin playing, Subramanyam happened to pick up his father's instrument, and switched to flute soon after. “Then there was no looking back."

Subramanyam said his vocal teacher Palghat K.V. Narayanaswamy taught at Wesleyan in the 1960s and 1970s, and had a great regard for and friendship with the flautist and late Adjunct Professor of Music T. Viswanathan PhD ’75 (1927-2002). Subramanyam met Viswanathan during his visit to Chennai in 1986, when his teacher asked Viswanathan for permission to train the eight-year-old boy.

Subramanyam first performed at Wesleyan in the spring of 1999 with Viswanathan, followed by Navaratri Festival appearances in 2003 and 2013. “The Navaratri Festival is quite well known,” Subramanyam said. "Outside of India, Wesleyan is the most important place where a department was established and so much of Carnatic music has been taught."

“Every decade I would like to push the limits of my instrument,” Subramanyam said.
“I don't want to be a ‘copy-paste’ of the past.” He said his experiments include playing specially crafted instruments made from ebony, maple, and bamboo, which can reach an octave lower than traditional South Indian flutes. "Carnatic music will sound very different through my instruments.”

Subramanyam said he was always a fan of North Indian music. “I thought it would add value to my art,” Subramanyam said of studying Hindustani music in the early 2000s.

North Indian tabla maestro Zakir Hussain (1951-2024) performed at the Navaratri Festival several times and collaborated with Subramanyam on a few occasions in various contexts, including when he appeared as a guest flute artist with the group Remember Shakti, led by English guitarist John McLaughlin. “It was always an honor and a privilege to play with him,” Subramanyam said of Hussain. “It's just an unbelievable thing that he is not around with us anymore.”

This month, Subramanyam will be accompanied by U.S.-based violinist Sruthi Sarathy and Patri Satish Kumar on mrdangam (double-headed drum). Subramanyam said he has performed over 2,000 concerts with Kumar since 1993. “I'm really looking forward to it,” Subramanyam said of returning to Wesleyan. He is flying to the United States for this concert and then returning to India. “It has always been a very memorable experience being there.”

For more information about the Navaratri Festival, including a presentation in honor of the 100th birthday of the late Wesleyan Artist in Residence and mrdangam player T. Ranganathan (1925-1987), and student showcases featuring Akhil Joondeph '26, Samvit Singhal '27, Kaustubh Vasudevan '26, and Suchita Sridhara '26, visit wesleyan.edu/cfa/navaratri.