Word: shanta
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...Chinese (nationalist, to be sure) invited to hear the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Like all visitors to America, they were asked by their hosts which part they liked best. "Oh," they replied, "we liked the part in the beginning without the conductor." Last night the situation was reversed, as Shanta Rao won over her audience by the swagger and delight with which she boldly took her bows, first swinging her arms high to either side of her body, then bowing low in that most graceful of Eastern gestures, touching her folded hands to her forehead...
...must confess I liked best the simplest of the dances, performed not by Shanta Rao herself but by her assistants, Chandramati and Padma. Imagine if you can an Indian Sophia Loren, as my companion in the audience suggested, and a lovely doll-like Oriental performing a dance of intense flirtation with the audience, whispering silently to them, looking them in the eye. One was sultry, pouting; the other prim and coquettish; yet both were dancing the same steps. When one glared out of the corner of her eye, the other peeked; yet both moved their eyes at the same time...
...Shanta Rao is an obvious master of the Eastern technique, which requires supreme flexibility of the fingers, hands, and arms. Her face can tell any feeling, and with her undisputed skill she is well-suited to revive the Indian classics, some of which have not been danced for fifty years. Even if Miss Rao's medium is strange to Western audiences, her artistry is apparent...
...year-old Bharata Natyam (the Drama of Bharata). High point of the program: Mohirti Attam (the Dance of the Enchantress), in which Dancer Rao proved herself a virtuoso performer. This dance had become so corrupted and eroticized by courtesans that it had been banned from the temples. Shanta, swathed in dazzling silk, danced it in its uncorrupted style, although her weaving, swaying interpretation was still sexy in a highly stylized...
...exercise muscles not usually used by Western dancers. Hands are incessantly occupied with mudras, the eloquent and elegant Hindu language of the hands. Head, neck, facial muscles, eyes, even eyebrows contribute. To reveal only the whites, wide-eyed dancers conceal the iris under the upper or lower lid, and Shanta Rao can make either one of her eyebrows dance up her forehead while the other is kept immobile. Fourteen Eye Movements. Mangalore-born Dancer Rao functions from her painted soles through her tinkling, braceleted ankles, right up to the bejeweled crown of her coal-black hair. She began training...