oul Cages by Savita Shastry, a unique bharatanatyam recital, will be performed at the Kamini auditorium this Saturday. Incorporating the basic elements and techniques of bharatanatyam, Soul Cages has been conceptualised as a musical ballad. Capturing the ephemeral emotions of life and death, an artistic experience is woven around a child and her tryst with death.

For danseuse Shastry, this performance is an innovative way of reaching out to people and also a means to increase the appeal of bharatanatyam. "For me, dance has been a means of expressing myself fully and bharatanatyam enables me to explore that potential. To watch this show, the less you know about bharatanatyam the better. I want even a layman to understand the beauty of this art form," says Shastry.

In Soul Cages, death is redefined, as the child who is taken there perceives heaven to be her prison. She is also an anomaly in the sense that she remembers her past life and her loved ones and being far from them torments her. It is this agony of the child that is explored in Shastry's performance.

Music within, a 2010 production that toured nearly a dozen countries, was Shastry's first foray into story telling through bharatanatyam. The concept revolved around a deaf girl discovering music in silence. "I wanted to tell a story using bharatanatyam. Thus it became the means rather than the end for what I wanted to say," she says.

Though originally called daasiyattam performed exclusively by devadasis during the colonial times, bharatanatyam has now become an upper class and upper caste domain. "The form has been catering to just a niche audience over the years and had become heavily dependent on a specific area's culture and ethos. I wanted to break these barriers and garner a wider appeal," she adds.