EXCERPTS FROM INDIAN PRESS REVIEWS

• "Alarmel Valli has become a legend. She is Bharatanatyam personified…..One can only marvel at her grace and vivacity, at her prodigious skill in choreography - matching the most graceful adavus to the most intricate of rhythms, and the prowess of her Abhinaya. She has developed and perfected the conservative Pandanallur tradition to such an extent that it can justifiably be called 'Valli Natyam' ".- Subbudu in The Statesman –New Delhi.
  
  
• “Valli a diamond in art … whose art unfolds in a sort of ecstatic mood, in which the performer and the viewer seem to flow in the same stream of consciousness”. - Shanta Serbjeet Singh – The Hindustan Times – New Delhi.
  
  
• "Legatee of a great heritage, Alarmel Valli spans the centuries as effortlessly and seamlessly as she does her dancing spaces".- Indian Express – Madras Alarmel Valli – a creative genius, who effortlessly combines art and its aesthetic articulation. The creative medium and the artist appear intertwined in an everlasting relationship. She has captured the imagination and senses of audiences world wide, with her inimitable style of dance that further bolsters the beautiful dance form of Bharatanatyam. - Economic Times – Chennai.
  
  
• “Alarmel Valli….of the Pandanallur style of Bharatnatyam, which she has made bloom afresh, with her breathtaking mastery, excellence of technique and great personal charm. Alarmel Valli gave her performance that original and distinctive flavour, finding her own unique way of combining the old and the new, tradition and innovation. The irrepressible force of her dance, her rare combination of pure and beautiful, lyrical line with unusual expressiveness and imperious dynamism, makes her unique.” – The Hindu – Madras.
  
  
• "In Valli, music and dance meet in such a state of harmony that we are confronted with the sublime. Her dance speaks to the soul and requires no analysis".- Midday - Bombay. "Valli enchants the initiated and the uninitiated alike - What is it that sets her apart? It is her ability to infuse beauty into whatever she creates, to transcend mere grammar and technique, to invest it with poetry and joy, giving dance an added dimension as it were. Her dance becomes 'abundance' - 'Sampurna', an uplifting experience”. The Economic Times –New Delhi.
  
  
• "Evergreen Valli …..Alarmel Valli who looks exactly the same as she did a quarter of a century ago- slender, relaxed, beautiful, fragile and yet able, in a trice, to capture one’s attention with her dance, a dance which is startlingly mature, perfectly formed, and shaped and informed with an inner quality that communicates both aspects of high art- the joy and the Rasa of creativity- instantly. She achieved the impossible as far as this critic is concerned- made time fly and took one back to an India, so different, that it was like entering another land. - Shanta Serbjeet Singh in The Hindustan Times –New Delhi.
  
  
• "The curtain went up and all thought vanished, as a fairy flitted on to the stage- Ariel freed by Prospero…an Apsara perhaps? It was Alarmel Valli. The evening passed in an ecstatically joyous experience of melody, movement and rhythm, patterned in a seamless mesh. Every movement was stylised, but ever so expressive. A fluid grace ran through the dances like a dream of beauty. The final piece came through as a celebration of the joy of dancing, an eloquent salute! Did anyone say that tradition was in danger? Perish the thought! With a dancer like Alarmel Valli around, it stands proud, with its soul intact, ready to meet other cultures on equal terms". -Indian Express - Madras.
  
  
• "Her dance is the victory of genius over technique. Superbly poised, she stands among the few great dancers of the world. It is only after seeing Valli perform that one begins to see the myriad moods and nuances of Bharatanatyam - as the dancer flits across the stage, magnificent, mercurial and breathtaking. Midday – Bombay.
  
  
• "The Sangeet Natak Academy festival concluded with Chennai based Alarmel Valli, whose performance showed why she is the top exponent of Bharatnatyam today. Valli shone like a fine chiselled gem. Her dance was like a fine-tuned instrument, her body and spirit, technique and abinaya in perfect harmony. She showed what stuff great art and artists are made of. Her performance will be long remembered and celebrated." - Times of India – Bangalore.
  
  
• "Valli's dance vibrates with her romance with the laya, every moment of its duration. There were moments when the dancer looked as if she was soaring on the laya like a bird, while during her execution of the jatis we had once again the romantic experience of seeing abstract tala given a bodily form, in those finely carved movements of hers".- Evening News –New Delhi.
  
  
• "Valli's is a mastery that conceals mastery in an enchanting vision of traditional dance".- The Hindu, Madras.
  
  
• "Alarmel Valli, a living poem of grace and beauty, who, with a glance or gesture, enraptures and makes poets of us".- Indian Express – Bombay.
  

EXCERPTS FROM FOREIGN PRESS REVIEWS

• "Valli holds the stage with the presence of a Nureyev and the professionalism and technique of a Baryshnikov Montreal Gazette.
  
  
• Valli - "A Living legend from age-old India. At one time she was a poem whose lines - flowed on as delicately as the soft breeze, at another she was a vigorous wind in passion, soon to return to her quiet tenderness. The movements of her body spoke louder than words. Human feelings of all kinds were crystallised in the bends and curves of her body".–Mehdat Assem Al Akbar – Cairo.
  
  
• "Watching Valli, I am not sure if great sculpture, is a human body made for eternity in stone, or if it is the body which becomes a work of art - a living statue, in a harmonious flow of plastic visions".- Gian Carlo Calza in Venice.
  
  
• "Now, as always, there are many gifted dancers in India, but Alarmel Valli is a paragon. Alarmel Valli is that rare thing - the solo performer who puts all others out of mind".- John Russel – former critic – New York Times.
  
  
• "Valli's art - patient tapestry work, where the smallest note of music links itself with the slightest movement of the eye-lashes or the hands…. A transfigured body takes shape - her arms become multiple, her flesh musical, her hands fluid like the wings of a butterfly, her feet agile and sonorous…... Imagine an instant, when one or another sculpture of the Chidambaram Temple starts moving! We would then know the secret of Alarmel Valli's Bharatanatyam - an instant in eternity".-Daniel Conrad-in-Telerama,-Paris.
  
  
• "To call Alarmel Valli the Prima Ballerina of Bharatanatyam is indeed not inappropriate. As part of the Hammoniale Festival at Kampnagel, she executed to perfection, masterpieces of this classical Indian dance form…Even the angels could not have danced more beautifully…When she dances, the age-old Bharatanatyam gains eternal validity. Monika Fabry – Hamburg.
  
  
• "Though she has extended the frontiers of this basically religious dance, her great charm and expertise span a period of over 2000 years, without profaning the art in any manner. And wherever she dances, whether it be the courtyard of temples, modern theatres or concert podiums, the Indian Gods, who themselves are represented as dancing, seem always to hover lovingly over her presentations." - Jochen Schmid in - Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
  
  
• “And who has ever seen an arm turn and form angles with such a consummate grace! Valli’s dance combines virtuosity and depth with captivating dynamics. But never will you find the aesthetics of the artificial loose itself in the lower domain of realistic and naïve expression. With Alarmel Valli, the great feelings of love, rage and happiness remain sublimefor, while she changes from mature woman to young girl. For goddesses inhabiting the earth know no age.” – Eva-Elizabeth Fischer in - Suddeutsche Zeitung - Munich.