“We were given the choice of performing at the amphitheatre as well, but we wanted to recreate the atmosphere of the royal court of Wajid Ali Shah, which is where these two art forms – Thumri and Kathak – came into being.”

It is rare to find an artist who can not only convey her love and mastery of her art to the audience, but also make them fall in love with it. It is rarer to find two such artists and even rarer to find them amicably sharing a stage.

But that is what we witnessed at the Kathak–Thumri Milap at the NGMA auditorium today evening. Almost two full hours of enthralling music and scintillating dance. Dhanashree Pandit reminded me so much of those too rare teachers and professors, who made their classes so interesting that you’d actually bunk bunking to attend them. She didn’t just sing those thumris, she owned them – playing them out slowly at first, like kite-string, pulling, releasing, teasing and then… setting them free to fly.

And really, it was an education. For someone whose only talent (as far as Hindustani classical music goes) is being able to differentiate a Des from a Bhairav, I came away from that performance feeling like I had taans and aalaaps sloshing out of my ears (in the nicest way possible). I came away wanting to dedicate my life (or what is left of it) to music! And dance! And glory to the performing arts!

But coming back to real life.

Dhanashree began the show with an introduction to the basic thumri. She explained the birth of the thumri as a counter-development to the more complex and sophisticated khayals of the period. How folk songs from UP made their way into the Mughal courts, where they were cleaned-up, polished, decorated with Urdu words and finally presented as graceful thumris.

Thumri and kathak are apparently sister art-forms, both having originated under the patronage of Wajid Ali Shah. The word thumri itself, has its origins in dance - ‘thum’ being a bol used in kathak and ‘ri’ from the Hindi word rijhana (to please).

The pieces were presented as interactions between the dancer and the musicians - Dhanashree would sing a piece with Keka performing it simultaneously. Watching this interaction on stage was truly awe-inspiring because it seemed that they never needed to speak to each other, like they had this secret language between them which made words absolutely unnecessary. Keka would simply nod at the tabla-player and in the next second the auditorium would resonate with frantic-but-perfectly-in-sync activity from all the four people on that stage.

Keka Sinha was fascinating as she swayed, pirouetted and acted out the thumri themes one after the other. Whether they were the Radha-Krishna stories or the depiction of the eight nayikas*, she was marvelously convincing in all of them.

At the end of this wonderful, wonderful evening, all I can say is thank God for Wajid Ali Shah!

*Classical heroines of the ancient scriptures of dance.