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Gracy's Foot Forward

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The lights have descended, resting upon a slender silhouette whose hasta mudras speak volumes. Fingers and feet in the right position, the performance begins. Her form moves and the subtle clanks of her ghungroos rise, but in strict co-ordination with the complex rhythms. It's Gracy Singh's we're talking about -- the lead actress in Aamir Khan's Lagaan. But that's old news. What is not known, however, is that she is also a dancer. Gracy Singh recently made her Bharatanatyam debut, recreating an old charm and she believes that she did well.

But this wasn't her Arangetram. That was completed in Chennai two months ago. "We performed at a temple for an auspicious beginning," she adds. There, the movements set to perfection, her kohl-smeared eyes rolled, accentuating the abhinaya, and her head jerked as fingers took the position of the third mudra. And tradition has it that the priest ''places'' the ghungroos before Goddess Parvati. "But he tied them to Goddess' feet instead. A blessing, everyone said," an elated Singh muses.

Singh's passion for the classical dance goes back to her childhood. "I have always been inspired by Hema Malini. In fact, I would repeatedly write letters to her, asking her to teach me, but got no reply," she recalls. So a disheartened Singh strolled to the Bharatanatyam Institute in Delhi to cultivate her fantasy. "The initial stages were monotonous but one has to go through the rigours," she insists. But an entree into television with Amanat put her childhood dream to rest. Only for a short while though. "As soon as I got a long break from acting, I plunged into the dance form, this time with my Guruji Deepak Mazumdar," Singh contends. So her seemingly coincidental film and dance debut was a much planned affair. "Deepakji and I had to plan everything a year ago," she informs.

After a year of mastering the 100 types of taal, swaras, the mudras and all that encompasses the art, Mazumdar decided that his student was ready to make an entree in the field. And after she was lauded for her performance last week by her inspirational force, Hema Malini, Singh feels she's now ready to take off.

"Learning Bharatanatyam is such a challenge. There's an ocean of knowledge to learn from," she says. Juxtapose the two art forms dancing and acting and she says that it's impossible to do so. Though her acting skills do complement her abhinaya, Singh feels that acting is imbibed in her. "It's a passion, but no challenge. The actor does try to improvise with every shot and obeys the director, but in dance it's different," the sentence ceased in mid-air, Singh trying to find the right words to explain that feeling. Of course, words do trickle after a few seconds but she merely reiterates: "it's impossible to define Bharatanatyam."

Singh, however, is still upset about the abysmal knowledge people have about the dance. "It's so ancient, cloaked in tradition, yet it's so difficult to sustain an audience," she laments. It was for this reason that Singh and Mazumdar decided to accentuate her performance, enhanced by techniques available.

"The audience waited patiently for one and a half hours and even Hemaji complimented my work," she exudes with enthusiasm, wanting to work with the actress one day. "I haven't been able to talk to her as yet," she claims.

The abhinaya comes easy to Singh -- the challenge lying in nritya. "Deepakji has been very critical of my short evolution as a dancer but that coaxes me to get better," the actress declares. She was indeed surprised when Mazumdar told her that she did well both at the Arangetram and the debut performance. "I thought I had made some technical errors but that all flew out the window when I was told it was well executed," she proudly exclaims.

There are no performances in the near future, but Singh confides that they are in the midst of choreographing new songs and dance sequences. "As long as I enjoy it I'll continue," she opines.

This story has been taken from The Indian Express newspaper as it appeared on 31 March 2001.