When Sanjna Kapoor tells an intimate audience at G5A’s Blackbox, “we want your money”, she comes across as anything but opportunistic. She is introducing a session of Junoon Salons, an arts initiative she launched with Sameera Iyengar, supported entirely by patron members. Sanjna is speaking to a group, including some of the city’s most influential across filmmaking, theatre and architecture, who are there to experience a 1.5 hour performance of Kattaikkuttu. The duration is significant because it’s a précis version of an odyssey. The actors and musicians used to performing on gravelly sprawling grounds for eight hours straight through the night are keeping it smooth and short. It’s not something indologist Hanna de Bruin lets anyone forget. But she knows that for an ancient dance form to thrive beyond the village of Punjarasantankal in Tamil Nadu, where it’s practiced at their gurukulam, they must adapt.

All she wants is equal commitment from the audience. She speaks of an indifferent Indian press that “won’t leave Chennai” to write about the state’s mindboggling cultural traditions. How then will anyone know Kattaikkuttu exists? How can they hope to get funding? How will the government be nudged into offering a helping hand to a practice that doesn’t find specific mention in ancient texts but could be 300 years old according to her estimates.