Avadhānam and Audience
Avadhānam sets a higher bar for an audience than most arts. It is probably at the other end of the spectrum to music, whose bar is the lowest purely from an enjoyment perspective. In that sense, a person simply cannot walk into an Avadhānam and start enjoying it. One needs to attend a few Avadhānams simply to get a hang of the framework. He also needs to be lucky to attend the performances of the really good avadhānis to...
Avadhānam is an ancient art/sport of India. It involves extempore creation of metrical verses on a variety of topics under myriad aesthetic constraints. It is a quintessential representative of that defining trait of all Indian classical arts – spontaneity. “Cittaikāgryam avadhānam,” “Avadhānam is the focusing of the mind” is its traditional definition. Any exercise in any art form requiring extensive concentration can borrow this term....