17 May 2012

A frisky God woos feisty lover

5/10/2011 11:21:00 a.m.

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Vivek Kinra invited Gayatri Bala to Wellington, cementing a 30 year dance friendship.

Vivek Kinra invited Gayatri Bala to Wellington, cementing a 30 year dance friendship.

TWO internationally renowned Indian classical dancers with a shared personal history are to reunite at Victoria University to perform the love story of playful blue God Krishna. Gayatri Bala is in Wellington for the third time to work with Vivek Kinra on new production Shree Krishna Leela. They met when Bala was five and Kinra was 15, and the pair are finally to play lovers: Kinra is the fun-and-women-loving God Krishna and Bala is the possessive, feisty Radha.
As a youngster, Krishna was a naughty God, stealing butter, eating mud and cheekily pulling on the saris of women. The older, spiritual Krishna falls in love with the beautiful but jealous Radha.
“We believe that everyone is born a Radha, even the men,” says Bala, “We are all souls seeking a higher energy level, a union with a higher spiritual character, be it God, Allah or Krishna.”
Kinra, who was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2010 for his contribution to dance, established the New Zealand Academy of Bharata-Natyam in Wellington in 1992. He previously earned a post-graduate Diploma in dance from Kalakshetra in Chennai, India and while he was studying he met Bala, the daughter of his dance teacher. She was five years old and ten years his junior.
The pair first performed together as students at the dance academy: Kinra and Bala’s mother were playing lovers, and the young Bala was the little love pigeon that flew messages between the two. They lost touch.
While Kinra pursued dance career in New Zealand, Bala became an established dancer in India. In 2006, Kinra found Bala and invited her to Wellington where she played the heroine in a sell-out Indian dance performance at the Opera House.
Bala returned to New Zealand on the 2010 Wellington Asia Residency Exchange programme, during which she lived in a cottage on Boulcott Street and worked for Capital E.
“I introduced children to Indian classical dance, the hand gestures, jumping like a deer, a frog… I also performed in Wellington’s Diwali festival,” smiles Bala, who loves Wellington, “There are a lot fewer people, I have my space and am at one with nature; here I watched the moon rise and the sun set at the same time.”
Now she’s back again. Finally playing the hero and heroine in a large-scale classical Indian dance production has cemented the 30-year friendship between Kinra and Bala.
“I was so young when I met him and I’ve metamorphosed into a nice butterfly.”
Shree Krisha Leela, Memorial Theatre, Victoria University, October 7-9.
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Cover Story

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