At a time when gender-based violence is at an all time high, where just over a week ago thousands took to the streets around Australia to protest and demand action and change, Nayika: A Dancing Girl feels particularly fitting and unfortunately relevant.
Co-Creators and Co-Directors Nithya Nagarajan and Liv Satchell have beautifully weaved together live music, traditional Indian dance, Bharatanatyam and a powerful script to not just tell a story or create art, but to make a moment that people will remember for years to come.
Nayika: A Dancing Girl, jumps from a modern Sydney setting where a young woman tells us of her recent dinner with her old High School best friend, back to their time in Chennai studying together and bonding over cute boys and in time, the dark secret that hangs between them. Vaishnavi Suryaprakash excels in this role, effortlessly switching between accents to delineate between the times and locations. Her strong, almost melodic voice denotes eliciting laughs from the audience over work drama and portion sizes. Unconsciously she draws you in, painting a picture that you can’t help but be engrossed in. The true highlight however comes from how she dances. Every movement was clean, precise and full of years of control, and not only, conveyed but shaped the narrative but heightened the emotions of the piece. The power and control that radiated from her dancing was awe-inspiring in it’s beauty and power and full credit to the co-creators and co-directors, Nithya Nagarajan and Liv Satchell, for helping her to form and create such majestic performances.
While there was only Performer in this production, one of the leading elements that helped shape it so well, was the live-music. As Composer, Sound Designer and one of the two musicians on stage, Marco Cher-Gibard created an immersive, evocative soundscape that felt like its own storytelling device, waxing and waning with the tension of the show. Bhairavi Raman was the other half of the on-stage musicians and the emotion that the two of them played together transported you into the story.
The light and dark of Nayika: A Dancing Girl is reflected in the Lighting Design by Morgan Moroney. His design is focused and captivating, pulsing with the rhythm of the show, highlighting the action and hiding the pain in its shadows. I must also give praise to Set and Costume Design by Keerthi Subramanyam, while simple, it was striking and beautiful.
This is so much more than just a simple play. Art is messy, art is complicated, art deals with horrible circumstances, it can leave you feeling good, it can leave you feeling upset but it can also be cathartic, a release a changing of energy. Most importantly art is transformational. Nayika: A Dancing Girl is running until the 19th of May and all I can say is, get your tickets before they sell out.