Bringing ancient work to life: The creative journey of reimagining a literary masterpiece for the stage

Hindustan Times

28-04-2025

In the contemporary era, when the content we consume is ever-changing like evolution on acid, from doomscrolling for your late-night trend hopping to dissing the friend who shares two-week-old outdated brainrot reels, bringing a retelling of a centuries-old text in the form of a dance performance is a reminder that not all the time evolution must be competitive to outwit, sometimes it outlasts, in a good way.
When content today plays survival games on social media with an expiry date, a dance performance reminds us that art has no expiry date, transcending time, returning and reincarnation in new forms to reignite relevance and meaning across generations. With social media turning relevance into a quest, this performance reminds us that relevance need not be a competition at all.
The dance performance is a Bharatanatyam production titled 'Maalyada: Andal's Sacred Garland,' performed at the Kamani Auditorium in Delhi on April 26. The choreography was created by Sangeet Natak Akademi Award-winning Bharatanatyam dancer Rama Vaidyanathan. The performance is based on Jeysundhar D's Maalyada: The Sacred Garland, a modern retelling of the 8th-century Tamil poet-saint Andal's 30 devotional hymns, collectively called Tiruppavai. Andal was a devotee of Lord Vishnu, and she expressed this devotion in her Tiruppavai, a collection of 30 hymns that reflect her spiritual longing and surrender.
HT Lifestyle interacted with the artist and author behind this performance to understand the creative process.
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Before we dive into the creative process of how the literature has been transformed into a dance performance, let's first explore the modern adaptation and the original work to understand the foundation on which the performance is built.
In an interaction with the author Jeysundhar D, he revealed that the ancient hymns written by Andal explored deep themes of philosophy and theology, along with elements from the Ramayana and Mahabharata. The complex text was transformed into a conversational format in English, in contrast to the original Tamil text, making it accessible to a pan-Indian audience. He gave the retelling a 'question and answer format,' where Andal's friends ask her questions, and they go on daily adventures while Andal explains their problems with philosophies based on Lord Vishnu's teachings.
The lively conversational tone, along with the illustrations, captures the readers, making the text more relatable and engaging. The spiritual meanings become more understandable.
It implies that conversations are generally easier because of everyday, familiar settings, and the back-and-forth dialogue makes the information more personal. With conversations typically involving storytelling, they tend to stick more, making them easier to remember and understand.
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In an interaction with Rama Vaidyanathan, who was the choreographer and the Sutradhar (narrator) said, 'I deconstructed what Andal said and made it simple through nice stories and relatable incidents of Krishna to understand Andal's work. The creative process behind it involved reading the book several times, several discussions with Jaysundhar to understand the book why he wrote, making subtle references to the Bhagavad Gita, Ramayana. The performance was structured in 9 stages of Bhakti that a devotee undergoes, Andal searching for truth, Andal searching for Krishna, and spiritual realisation. I structured it that way and enhanced it with music."
She wanted to evoke the emotional experience of Bhakti and surrender in the audience as well, making it a key part of the structuring process as well. This indicates how certain expressions were to be given, along with musical notes to heighten the experience.
So, it can be understood that the transformation behind the creative process is rooted in conviction, understanding the literature piece from the author's perspective to truly capture its essence and infuse it into a performance.
While Jeysundhar's contemporary retelling had dialogues, Bharatanatyam made it even more evocative with its expressive movements and gestures, translating the original essence of Andal's work into a complete visual and auditory experience.
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Younger audiences can also be drawn to classical performances by leveraging the power of social media and focusing on strong, evocative narratives, rather than just traditional recitals.
Nikhil Soni, Group Manager at HCL and Shiv Nadar Foundation, added, 'We have realised the importance of curating performances with a strong narrative and storytelling element. Instead of presenting just a dance or music recital,which traditionally appeals to an older audience, we now aim to build a story or theme around the performance. So, by building content on pillars rooted in storytelling, we try and create performances that are not only more appealing but also more Instagrammable in terms of aesthetics.'
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