Lovely program diminished by disregard for audience at The Egg

Kathak dancer Barkha Patel summoned Shiva on Friday night at The Egg, where Indian music and dance program was tainted by presenter chaos.

ALBANY – The evening of Indian music and dance was meant to summons the Gods – Shiva in particular. The supreme being is the preserver and protector, meant to touch upon the world’s basic primal knowledge and keeps the universe in balance.
 
But things were hardly in balance on Friday night at The Egg. This is no fault of the amazing artists – two stellar dancers, two musicians and a singer – who performed on the state-managed stage. No, the chaos was created by The Egg, mainly promoting an event with a start time of 6:30 and then not starting until well after 7.
 
Because of the early hour, many people brought their small children. Parents did their best to entertain these wee ones as they stared at a naked stage where nothing happened for 45 minutes – an eternity in the life of a three-year-old.
 
It was also bad form that no one explained what was going on. And when a talkative MC finally took the stage at 7:15 p.m., no apology was offered to the restless crowd.
 
At this point, many were no longer in the mood, as the chatter went onto too long, and left. For those of us who stayed to see the professional dancers and musicians, who actually didn’t take the stage until nearly 8 p.m. and were on for only 30 minutes, the program was gratifying.
 
The bulk of this brief concert was performed by Kathak dancer Barkha Patel who performed with an outstanding trio of musicians including Devash Chandra playing the tabla with singer Shweta Pandya and Rohan Misra on sarinda.
 
Patel, dressed in a full white skirt with bells wrapped in her ankles invoked Shiva in a dance in which she lunged and spun, stopping with abruptness to raise her arms to the sky as if giving Shiva a guidepost to the disordered and distressed Earth.
 
She warmed up her audience with the stomping of her feet in quickly and complex patterns and by extending her fingers in flowery motifs.
 
Her beauty was complemented by the musicians. Chandra was extraordinary on the tabla, with his hands and fingers drawing the most delightfully rich sounds from the drums. Pandya, who offered an interlude between the two dances, was hypnotizing, vibrating the atmosphere and tapping into nature’s deepest ability to live and love.
 
The evening concluded with Patel who took the audience from behind – entering at the top of the aisle with an exotic dance in which she carried a vessel with red roses that she would crush before offering to someone in the seats.
 
Patel, a gorgeous dancer, mystified with her allure in the darken theater. The focus then shifted to a mirrored stage where she poured dirt from her vessel and raised her arms as if in  prayer.
 
Aside from her ability to bewitch, she did something else that I found inspiring for Indian dance going forward – they melded contemporary dance and theatricality into her movement – broadening the enchantment to the larger audience who actually stayed.
 
One final note. Dance has always been the neglected and under appreciated Cinderella of the arts. And while it used to enjoy broad support from Capital Region presenters in the last century, these past two decades can only be described as an assault on the art.
 
Here is my appeal to theater presenters who find dance too expensive and audiences too small, thanks to their continued dismissal, to bother booking it. Please respect the audiences you have. One way to do that is start on time.