Found: Rangam (Malayalam, 1985) and Shobana/Mohanlal's Bharatanatyam and Kathakali Dances!

Rangam, one of the holdouts from my "holy grail" wish list, has finally been uploaded to YouTube! (Update: New source relinked in 2019). Thanks to cram for informing me of this lucky discovery! As I had hoped, classical dance (Kathakali and Bharatanatyam) serves as the backdrop to Rangam's plot, and no more than 15 minutes go by before dance is seen again either in the background or as a centerpiece. Most exciting of all, there are lots of my beloved dance practice sequences scattered throughout the film!

Rangam is part of the rash of classical arts films that swept South India in the late 70s to 90s starting largely with the success of Sankarabharanam (Telugu, 1979). Rangam seems to be one of the earliest Malayalam films to follow the trend, and it was followed by other similar classical dance/arts films in Malayalam like Swathi Thirunal (1987), Kamaladalam (1992), Swathi Kiranam (1992), Rajasilpi (1992), Devasuram (1993), Manichitrathazhu (1993), Parinayam (1994), and Kaliyattam (1997).

Now on to the dances! I made a comment on the video at YouTube that lists all the dances in the film by category, so if you go there you can click on any timestamp of interest and it will whisk you away to that timestamp on the player. Here are my favorite dances from the film...

Bharatanatyam/Mohiniattam Dances

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7 comments Bharatanatyam, Kathakali, Mohanlal, Practice Dance, Shobana, Wishlist

Film Thoughts: Vanaprastham (1999, Malayalam - Mohanlal, Suhasini)

After I finished watching Vanaprastham recently, I felt like I had not just watched a movie but rather had an experience.  A viewing experience which completely transported me to lush 1950s Kerala for over two hours.  When I rewatched the film a few days later to gather some more screencaps, I felt like I was revisiting long lost friends whose lives I cared deeply about, and I wished to know more about them beyond the constraints of the film. I didn't feel like I was watching Mohanlal act in this film--I was watching his character, Kunhikuttan.  That said, writing a review of such an excellent film has been extremely difficult as I feel I have only scratched the surface of what this film has to offer.

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19 comments Kathakali, Mohanlal

Classical Dance Practice Scenes/Songs in Indian Films

There is something charming and beautiful about classical dance practice numbers in Indian films. Perhaps it's the unassuming and flattering cotton sari wrapped around the dancer's body; I've always liked plain saris a bit more than the full, complicated costume. Or maybe it's the everyday, unadorned, simple nature of the dance that adds to its beauty. Or it could be that the dances often gets closer to their classical roots in this format. Whatever it is, I'm simply a huge fan of them in films.

Below is a list of all 34 practice numbers I can think of in Indian films where the purpose of the song or scene is not "performance" but rather informal "practice" overall. It's interesting how many of them are from the 80s and 90s, the seeming "golden era" of this type of classical performance in film. The videos below are listed in rough order of awesomeness, favorites first. If you can make it all the way to the end, consider yourself a classical dance nerd like me! (Or maybe it's just list-making nerd?) Enjoy!

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27 comments Aditi Rao Hydari, Bhanupriya, EV Saroja, Girish Karnad, Jayapradha, Kamal Hassan, Kathak, Kathakali, Kuchipudi, Manju Bhargavi, Mohanlal, Mohiniattam, Practice Dance, Rekha, Revathy, Shobana, Sudha Chandran, Vineeth

Tandav Dances in Indian Cinema

One of my favorite forms of dance in Indian films is the Tandav dance.  When I first saw the dance form, I was amazed by the passion and energy displayed despite the choreography appearing simplistic at first glance.

The dance's origin comes from Hindu mythology, a subject which I am so pitifully unknowledgeable about that I'm going to borrow a few sentences from Wikipedia to help me out:  "Tandava or Tandava Nrtya, the divine art form, is a dance performed by the Hindu god Shiva. According to Hindu mythology, Shiva’s Tandava is a vigorous dance that is the source of the cycle of creation, preservation and dissolution. While the Rudra Tandava depicts his violent nature, first as the creator and later as the destroyer of the universe, even of death itself; the Ananda Tandava depicts him as the enjoyer of his creation - the universe. Shiva as Nataraja (lit. "Lord of dance") is considered the supreme lord of dance. [...] No doubt the root idea behind all of these dances is more or less one and the same, the manifestation of primal rhythmic energy."

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22 comments Akshay Kumar, Balakrishna, Chiranjeevi, Girish Karnad, Gopi Krishna, Kamal Hassan, Kamala, Male Dance, Meenakshi Seshadri, Mohanlal, NTR, Sandhya, Sivaji Ganesan, Sridevi