By JENNIFER DUNNING

Vidya Murthy blended age-old Indian classical dance forms and technique with a modern boldness and extraordinary physical control in three dances she presented on Friday at the Ames Auditorium of the Lighthouse to raise money for children with eye problems in India.

Ms. Murthy is young and relatively new to the field, but already there is a buzz about her. And she lived up to the advance praise.

"Pushpanjali," the opening dance, served to introduce Ms. Murthy and her light and sensuous style of moving, which was almost flirtatious in its lack of traditional reserve.

Most impressive was "Dashavatara," a varnam, or kind of dance composition that requires the performer to balance demanding technical effects with a clear flow of abstracted storytelling.

In "Dashavatara," choreographed by her teacher, Padmabhushan Kamala Narayan, Ms. Murthy fleetingly embodied the 10 incarnations of Lord Vishnu — among them a fish, a tortoise, a man with an ax and Kalki the destroyer — as he tried to save humanity from evil. Her radiant facial expressions and delicately complex, resilient hand gestures conveyed the characters and emotions. A moment of consternation followed by a face crumpling affectingly in tears suggested immersion in the story, as did the deep kneeling bow into which she sank, exalted, at the end of this long dance.

The driving impulses of Ms. Murthy's dancing were a little abrupt sometimes. But one never lost sight of her strong, lyrical line and her gift for slipping from one direction, emotion or rhythm to another in a beautifully modulated flow of motion. The complex rhythms she sustained, with the first-rate musicians, in the closing pure-dance "Thillana" suggested her remarkable physical control and agility.

Babu Parameswaran was the extraordinary singer, pyrotechnical yet never obtrusive, with M. S. Kannan on violin, Ravichandar Kulur on flute and T. Vishwanathan on the Indian classical mridangam, a two-headed drum. Less amplification would have been better, but that was the only disappointment.


Source: NY Times