Vidwan Sridhar Jain: The dance prince of royal city Mysuru
He is six-plus feet tall, with a healthy mop of hair on a smiling face. His demeanour oozes goodness of heart in art. He dances with abandon, exuding confidence that the legacy of dance in India is in the safe hands of servers like him. Meet Vidwan Sridhar Jain, lovingly known as the ‘dancing prince of Mysuru’.
Sridhar Jain teaches for free, even buys disciples costumes, with the larger Jain community helping in his endeavours. In the past two decades that I have known him, his style statement has been unique: silk lungi, an impressive top, thick rudraksh beads around the neck enhanced with gold and matching anklets. Add a silky smile.
Wherever Sridhar Jain goes, he exudes positivity. A genuine warmth increasingly going missing from the dance world, where jealousy, insecurity, one-upmanship and groupism abound in sections. He is not after awards or grants, has built his own institution—the Sri Nimishambha School of Dance in Mysuru—with self-earned sums and public support. What more, he teaches his art for free. If that doesn’t deserve national recognition then what does?
“I’ve no family background in Indian classical dance,” shares Sridhar Jain, opening up about how it all began. “I was an electronic engineer. My journey in dance began out of depression. My brother died in an accident and I needed an anchor. Classical dance, with its vigorous demands of stamina, structure and solidity, made me strong,” he says, adding: “I am over 50, but should anyone think I look 40 or can dance like a 30-year-old, the credit goes to Indian classical dance.”
Sridhar Jain’s role of a heroic dance-master in the 2004 Kannada film Apthamitra added a feather to his cap. Later, his marriage to Soumya, scion of an eminent Karnataka family of musicians, gave his career a fillip. “Earlier, I was teaching all sorts of dance to earn: western, film, folk. With Soumya as my home minister, I had to shape up and focus just on classical,” he says, smilingly.
Today, Sridhar Jain boasts of hundreds of students in Mysuru. He is one of the most-sought-after gurus for mega dance shows abroad—United States, Australia, China, Malaysia to mention a few. His students are in demand, such as disciple Dr Aagnika Ajaikumar. At the recent Hejje-Gejje dance festival, 27 years in running, Ajaikumar opened the solo segment, having just returned from a magical performance at Neemrana’s Tijara Fort in Alwar.
This year’s theme at Hejje-Gejje was Shiva Tandava, performed seamlessly by Sridhar Jain, Soumya, daughter Lasya, son Sarang and senior talents trained by the Vidwan, namely Shreyas G., Ananya Mahesh, Viraj N., Sarika Shetty and Sanjana Narayan, who undertook stellar roles and delivered. Lasya is a classical beauty. Given her lineage, it is no surprise this budding architect is a fine dancer too. The family has put Mysuru on the national dance map and how.
The Shiva Tandava production was akin to a Broadway show, minus the huge budgets and rehearsals. It moved from scene to scene without gaps or mishaps. To bring in talents of the form such as Laxminarayan Jena (Kathak), Nidhaga Karunad with wife (Bharatanatyam) and Vasanth Kiran (Kuchipudi) was no mean feat. Bilingual star compère Bhuvaneshwari conducted with elan.
Lasya danced as Parvati with Sridhar Jain in one sequence and the chemistry between the two was winsome. In another sequence, Soumya, as mother earth, looked divine. First-rate technical inputs and a large display screen made the two hours-plus production spiffy. Some editing, though, would help as in places the performance seemed predictable.
Sridhar Jain, with this production and the annual Hejje-Gejje festival, has established himself as the new dance prince of the royal city of Mysuru, proving that there’s nothing small about small-town (non-metro) India.
—The writer is an authority on Indian performing arts and culture and policy
