“You just can’t fake it in dance. You just cannot, however much you try,” she says with a tone of brevity in her voice. Pratibha Prahlad, noted Bharatnatyam danseuse may have defied the critics and done her own thing, but as she says, “I have always done things that excite and stimulate my intellect as an individual and remained true to my art form.”
Prahlad took to dancing at an early age of four and didn’t even realise that she had started her journey in dance. “I would come home from school and then would long to play. And my mother, being an English professor was busy with her work commitments, so she would just ask me to go and play with the kids next door. I saw these girls dancing next door and I went and joined them. Two years later, when my teacher asked me to get `10 as fees, did my mother realise that I was learning to dance,” she says. Prahlad has had the privilege of learning under Guru V.S. Muthuswamy Pillai, Guru Kalanidhi Narayanan, Prof. U.S. Krishna Rao and Dr Vempatti Chinna Satyam. “I decided to take up dancing professionally when I was 18. It has given me a personality that I didn’t think would be possible if I hadn’t learnt dancing. All along I kept saying that dancing is my life especially those formative professional years between 18 and 38. But then I realised that dance was the only thing I knew and
didn’t really care so much for anything else,” says Prahlad. Motherhood changed her life and that is when she realised she had to be responsible for another being.
“Saying that dance is your life all the time is being more ego-centric. You are lost in this shell of self absorption and barely pay attention to anything around you. Having said that, I have had many life-altering experiences, which have evolved the dynamic process of my way of dancing. Till date, my heartthrobs for dance and I still spend sleepless nights over dance. It has this huge, enormous power over me to frazzle me and make me go crazy,” she says.
Some of Prahlad’s noted dance productions include Panchjanya, Vande Mataram, Meghdoot, Call of the flute and Krishna’s widows. “All of them have compelled me to think and rethink our perspectives, morals and aspirations. Panchjanya was perhaps the most magnificent and biggest dance productions with five dance styles pendulating between rhythm and melody with fifty musicians and with the backdrop of Purana Qila, it was one of the most splendid productions. Call of the flute was an important one talking about the integration of urban and rural India and it was quite a complex topic to approach, which was made simpler with the metaphor of Krishna. Krishna’s widows spoke about the plight of Varanasi’s widows. The issue was close to my heart and their cond-ition propelled the production,” says Prahlad.
Having led a life out of suitcases, Prahlad says that at some point of time art takes a backseat.
“The kind of intensity I danced with, the performances I would give almost every alternate day in my early days and running from festival to another didn’t hit me. I met with an accident in 2008, for which I underwent a surgery and then had to take the decision of modifying dance to suit my knee or else I wouldn’t be able to walk in few years,” says Prahlad who went through a gamut of emotions in that break. It was a period of reflection.
She cites the three most important things to be a soloist, which include passion — driven dancing, discipline — rigorous practice of dance and finally the resilience and commitment one needs to pursue one’s passion. “It is the enormity and uncertainty of the field that needs you to have that courage and confidence. It isn’t stable and steady and you can’t make people believe you are a good dancer till you prove it with your art form,” she says.
In the world of networking to get performances and awards, young dancers are leading many lives to meet various ends. As a result, many are criticised for neglecting the real art form.
“Many dancers in the process of mapping their careers, end up doing too many things and ignoring some serious issues. But once on stage, there is absolutely no compromising on dance. On stage, it is about who you are and what you are doing,” explains Prahlad.