Witness Friday’s performance at the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts at New York University. The dancerRama Vaidyanathan, an exponent of the Bharatanatyamidiom of southern India, was making her New York debut. She began by creating geometries, tracing rectangular paths around the stage and by making sharp change of direction — North! South! East! West! — then slicing diagonals in the air with arm gestures. This was “Sannidhanam: The Temple and the Goddess,” in which the dancer first creates building, then deity. In “Varnam” she enacted a declaration of complex erotic feeling for the god Vishnu, the maker of both the world she knows and the emotions she now feels.
The performance was the first in a new Dancing the Godsseries presented by the World Music Institute. During the evening Ms. Vaidyanathan kept returning to the theme of love. After the intermission she danced “Jamuna Teer” (“By the Banks of the River Jamuna”), playing the tale of Krishna and the gopi (cow-herd) girls, and “Lament to the Birds,” in which the lovelorn heroine addresses one bird after another, finding in each a likeness of Vishnu, who has her heart. But both of these dances, though, had complete passages of virtually abstract form with no apparent hint of representation.
The program ended with “Tillana,” a pure-dance crescendo about the deity Ardhanareeswara, combining the male and female principles of Shiva and Shakti. The dancer alternately embodies one and the other until it is apparent she contains both. Different layers of expression succeeded one another: here near-abstract sequences, there passages of characterization.
Ms. Vaidyanathan executed many details of these numbers tellingly. The slap of her bare foot on the ground always made a full impact, and, especially in the second half, she had marvelous long moments of balance, held with full energy. Miming the darts or melting force of love, or the dialogue with birds, she was keenly focused. Moving her head from side to side, as if separating it from her neck, she was vivid. Vibrating her fingers at the end of the “Tillana,” she was exciting. Her execution was so clear that the fascinations of the Bharatanatyam genre itself were objectively evident.
They weren’t, however, continuously engrossing. The program attempted a variety of dramatic lighting effects, awkwardly achieved at the Skirball Center. The main drawback, however, was Ms. Vaidyanathan’s line. Curves of the upper and lower body did not answer each other in complete harmony; arm movements were sometimes sketched rather than given full weight. She was supported by five musicians at the side of the stage, among whom the soft, throaty vocalization of Indu Sivankutty Nair was a constant pleasure.