MÅ«kuá¹i
Her dance, her reflection, her redemption.
Synopsis
MÅ«kuá¹i The Journey Back traces the life of Meenakshi, a Mohiniyattam dancer in Kerala, as she navigates love, loss, and the shifting tides of society from the 1930s to the 1950s. Once caught between tradition and personal desire, she experiences rejection, rivalry, and the harsh judgments of a world that commodifies women’s art. As Meenakshi reflects on her past and her judgments of others, she comes to confront the very ways she has measured her own worth. In a quiet, transformative moment, a simple reflection shows her what she has overlooked, and hints at the possibility of reclaiming dignity, value, and her place in a world that once denied her.
Research
This immersive screen and theatre work developed by Ghirija Jayarraj as part of the Yaathra series was inspired by the short story Munaam Aatakari, a work of creative non-fiction by Shruthi Kezhakepuram Purushotham. Its conceptual framework draws on research conducted by Shruthi on the scholarship of Alexia Justin Lemos, particularly her doctoral thesis Bracketing Lasya, which examines Mohiniyattam and the Nair woman within Kerala’s shift from matrilineal memory to patriarchal order. Academic inquiry was interwoven with lived experience by Shruthi in creating this and simultaneously was shaped by her perspective as a Malayalee woman and postgraduate engagement with feminist and spiritual philosophy.
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For Ghirija Jayarraj, the project became a personal excavation of lineage. In developing Mukuti, the screen and Theatre work, she sought connection to her late grandmother, a Nair woman from Palakkad whom she never met.
This inquiry was coupled with her curiosity of hereditary artists and that expanded into conversations with hereditary artists, prompting deeper reflection on status, caste, and class. These explorations by Ghirija were further informed by critical works including The Undoing Dance by Srividya Natarajan and Celluloid Classism by Hari Krishnan.
At its centre, MÅ«kuá¹i the immersive theatre and screen work explores judgement within caste and class structures, and the internalisation of those hierarchies among women.
Its philosophical and spiritual ideas of MÅ«kuá¹i from the Saptam repertoire of Nirmala Panicker, have been adapted by Ghirija (Screen and narrative structure) and Shruthi (Stage) to take performative and narrative form extending the dance and its metaphors into a multidimensional immersive experience.
