Different strokes form Carlyta Mouhini

Imagine flamenco dancers grooving to the tunes of mridangam and Carnatic voilin and bharatnatyam dancers moving to the sounds of western percussion and guitar. Artist Carlyta Mouhini brings this very unique concept of dance fusion to life.
   
Carlyta does an amalgamation of Spanish vocals and flamenco fusion with bharatnatyam avaratanam (vocals) and angikam (rhythm) dotted with flamenco songs with many words from the Spanish gypsy language, derived from the ancient Indian Sanskrit.

“I met Nalini from Shri Pavitra Art Academy recently and she expressed her concern about the fading interests in bharatnatyam in urban India. I thought that a unique fusion concept would make it interesting for the young urban audiences who are not very interested in the classical dance form,” says Carlyta.

Carlyta also sings the soprano and a classical singer does the swaram while her troupe performs Gitana — the oldest folk of South of Spain — and another troupe will do the bharatnatyam simultaneously. “I am doing the soprano in basic raw vocals to complement the swaram. The rhythm of tap dancing is very similar to the ta thayya and that drives the feet movement in bharatnatyam. The dance forms complement each other,” says Carlyta who has sung the Bollywood-Latin style number Le Le Maza Le for Wanted and an authentic Latin dance song Salome in the upcoming Kites.

The concept comes from the idea that folk dances around the world could be evolved into global dance styles through fusion while keeping the purity of the original dance form intact. “There is no difference between Sa Re Ga and Do Re Mi. The same taal can be used to do gitana and to do the bharatnatyam, only the styles are different,” says Carlyta who is also trained in bharatnatyam along with the flamenco. The fusion of the two of world’s oldest folk and classical forms also carries the message of the universality of music and dance. 

Next month Carlyta will be doing a fusion of flamenco, tango and bharatnatyam with member of the International Dance Council, Lata Surendra.