Freedom of expressions

LEELA VENKATARAMAN
Gati's two-day presentation in New Delhi seems to suggest that in the globalised world the Contemporary dancer has an international identity.
Photo Courtesy: Gati

In performance Mayuka Ueno Gayer from Japan.
The first response on seeing the unrestricted freedom of young dancers, clad in frocks, and work-a-day attire was that this could be happening in any part of the western world. In this exploration and search for new, personalised movement expressions one saw nothing of impulses triggered from years of practice in Indian dances, evolving into different individualised contemporary movement manifestations. One wondered why one never felt this while watching Chandralekha's works or while seeing what Uday Shankar or Narendra Sharma did in their productions, or even while watching Navtej Singh Johar's recent creation? Surely that too was Contemporary work? In the globalised world, boundaries specifying cultural identities are being erased and the strongest manifestation of this would seem to be the Contemporary dancer who now has an international identity. The dancers on this occasion too came from a very mixed background of training, many settled in foreign countries.
The two-day presentation at Shri Ram Centre, under the aegis of Gati Dance Forum comprised works evolving out of Gati's Summer Dance Residency assisting aspiring choreographers coming from different countries and dance backgrounds, traditional and contemporary, through a ten-week, intense dance exchange to develop their own movement expressions, providing each dancer with financial support, individual monitoring and workshops, rehearsal space and production assistance.
The mentors were Maya Krishna Rao the well known Theatre artist, Chris Lechner a movement artiste working with dance and installation art and Anusha Lall founder Director of The Gati Dance Forum, a Bharatanatyam dancer working on new perspectives in the classical dance form. The guest mentors were Victoria Hauke a Hamburg based choreographer and Jean Christophe Lanquetin, a scenographer based in France.
Pick of the lot
By far the best work was “One Voice” by Nongmeikapam Surjit (Bonbon) founder of Nachom Arts of Contemporay Dance Company Manipur. Built round the trauma of torture where both victim and torturer suffer similar pangs, the focused intensity of movement showing the convulsed, tortured body pulled, stretched, gagged, stifled and thrown around, pointed to unique creative imagination. The last movement in an accelerando, with a shuddering body, making even the face become a blur, accompanied by the extraordinarily emotive vocalisations, marked the point of climax. The contrast in the end was a peaceful lilting Manipuri movement accompanied by a “Haiyaho..” with the dancer distancing himself from the entire scene by getting off the stage to settle on a chair facing performance space like a viewer from outside. A fine touch!
The other unique work “Floating Sphere” by Mayuka Ueno Gayer from Japan focusing on “in-between-ness” had the advantages of a supple beautifully-trained body and a sense of humour. Described as a search between “the seen and the unseen, between inside and outside, between the vertical and the horizontal, between gravity and anti-gravity, between the everyday and sacred, between the larger kinesphere and the smaller one” what movement did was to move from Ballet stances and steps to the Odissi tribhanga (training under Pratibha Jena) – the change in centre of gravity, and attitudes both bodily and mental achieved through in-between transition points showing difficult but controlled movements. Frehel's voice on tape singing “Si tu n'etais pas la” was evocative.
Seductive feel
Opposed to a preconceived emotional state or theme, Rukmini Vijayakumar with her Bharatanatyam/Contemporary dance background went through movement which had a very seductive feel. But lack of a theme made movement repetitious and lacking in centrality.
Very intellectual and German in its satire (He works in Austria and Germany) questioning the needless romanticism of materialistic life, Deepak Kurki Shivaswamy's “Lvoe” saw the dancer moving to romantic music but in a very different tone wearing different hats (literally and metaphorically questioning ideas of right and wrong).
Mehneer Sudan's “Inside Bodies, talking Comfort” looking at the exchange between a masseuse and her client saw the presentation by Mehneer and Divya Vibha Sharma take on a tone where the latter as client becomes almost without a will, an automaton, with mind/body controlled entirely by the masseuse. It was interesting to see movement inspired by the actions of the massage. Inspired by Aglaja Veteranyi's “Why the Child was cooked in Polenta”, “Around the wandering shadow” conceived by Niranjani Iyer, a choreographer/director who studied in Paris, was dance theatre. Accompanied by classical guitarist Shamant Behel, this production was interesting in the way it perceived how persons cope with strange places without falling apart. There was humour in the spoken passages like the “Mother with hips wide as a circus tent suspended by hair.”