Thinking on the Feet

 

 

It doesn't matter if you win or lose, it's what you do with your dancin' shoes.' Remember these lines from “Grease”, that timeless Travolta musical? At the Attakkalari India Biennial 2009 dance festival in Bangalore, it was the whole point. A multi-discipline contemporisation of a medium of expression as dance, accomplished by a unique enterprise of artists and art connoisseurs, resulted in a 10-day long (Feb 6 to 15) extravaganza that the city won’t forget in a hurry.

Like a son et lumière crossed over with a musical, the event brought under one roof – in fact, four (venues) – the theatrics of dance with the magic of design, be in terms of stage installations, acoustic arrangements or lighting technologies. For instance, in Chronotopia, the highly evocative multimedia dance production presented by the Attakkalari Repertory, the choreography that unfurled in sensuously gentle yet amazingly agile moves was accentuated by the dimensions lent by state-of the-art light play, and some haunting music by Paris-based musician Mathias Duplessy. Even though based on an ancient Tamil epic, Chilappathikaram, Chronotopia was still open to interpretation by the audience, as was the case with nearly all other performances at the Festival. Explained Jayachandran Palazhy, Artistic Director of the Festival, as well as one of the performers in Chronotopia, “It’s a journey through space and time. Technology helped to dislodge the sense of chronology at times… The interactive scenography actually reflected the emotional landscape of the characters themselves.”

Chronotopia, with its multi–racial production crew, was also demonstrative of the Festival as a forum for international collaboration and cultural exchange, ensuring art partook of the fruits of globalisation too. In contrast, sitting in for Quantransitions was a relatively more indigenous experience, albeit no less intriguing. The Rhythmosaic Dance Company quartet from Kolkata led by husband–wife team Ronnie and Mitul, with Amit and Prasanna showcased Quantum Mechanics of a Psychophysical Journey through an elaborate pastiche combining Kathak and western jazz moves. Set to minimalist music – even absent in parts – the audience was inevitably drawn to the kinetics on stage, ranging in tempo from near-stillness to a blur of motion. Physics, for once, had everyone riveted!

After the 30-minute quantransition experience, Jonah Bokaer presented Charade, wherein elaborate acrobatics by him were seen replicated over digital animation on the screen, realised, as a video showed, by attaching sensors to his body. At one point, he solemnly surveyed the audience while munching on an apple, a move he later described as “returning the gaze” trick, as an attempt to exact what is otherwise rarely doable in live theatre or dance.

As the aficionados filed in for the shows, excitement and curiosity sounded in equal measure. Said Jaissy John, business developer for a leading cellphone manufacturer, and a contemporary dance student herself until ‘connecting people’ at work left her little time for the arts, “I used to be more of a regular at such events, but it’s been a while now… What makes contemporary dance interesting is that it’s like abstract art; it breaks away from the structures as defined in traditional forms.”

Another production called Three did not so much as break away as it managed to break down the idea of dance as being a vocabulary of movement. Tom Alter rendered a soulful recitation of Urdu poetry and T S Eliot’s “The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock”, followed by excerpts from his own play involving Maulana Azad’s dictation to secretary Humayun Kabir about the mistakes and attitude of the stalwarts of India’s independence struggle. Then it was Pascal Seiger’s turn to impress with his saxophone, after which Suresh Kaliyath came on stage to perform a purely traditional dance form from Kerala called Ottamthullal. Poetry at a contemporary dance festival? Tom Alter reasoned, “In brilliant poetry as Prufrock, words dance…

emotions dance… Three is thus like a journey of dancing words into actual dance with music acting as a bridge between the two.” Fair enough, considering interdisciplinarity is a hallmark of contemporary art, including dance.

Humour was not too far away at the Festival, though Philippe Saire’s Could I Draw Your Attention to the Brevity of Life work could be termed ‘light’ for more than just that. With myriad kinds of lights including parallel shafts and squarish lampshade like props, the innovative choreography of Brevity hinged on the absurd, even as the entertaining – and flexible – troop kept the laughs going with funny faces and noises.

Other ‘housefull’ shows included the Korean Dance Theatre CcadaoO’s piece called The Murder in the Elevator which treated the audience to a seamless fusion of modern Korean dance and old world ballet reinforcing the oriental flair for flexibility; Samudra group’s The Cosmic Dance of Siva, that left the atmosphere throbbing long after, and Padmini Chettur’s Pushed unraveling like a study of human ergonomics.

All in all, an attempt that certainly pushed the envelope of conventions far enough to take heed of the need to invest in a system of creativity… "Contemporary dance is an attitude"

Says Jayachandran Palazhy, Artistic Director of Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts.

What is the objective of Attakkalari?

It is to create a context for contemporary performance in India. For creating a context, we need to have audiences who are interested & inspired, artists who are committed and innovative and also systems that will not only support the process of creating work but also those interested in witnessing it. The Festival is one of the many activities of Attakkalari.

Like mudras in traditional dance forms, what is the vocabulary of contemporary dance?

Contemporary dance, you could not call a ‘form’; it is more like an approach, an attitude towards creating work, like contemporary painting, or contemporary literature, or contemporary cinema… So each of the artists will have a language according to the particular concept or theme they’re dealing with. Let’s say, in Bharatnatyam, the language, just as the stories, is pre-determined; things are classified. Whereas if you are a contemporary writer, you choose your language, style of writing, imagery and other expressions, so the task is more difficult, because for that, one should have enough facilities and creativity to find a language that works for that specific production…

Contemporary dance is rather fascinating; do you think it could, in a way, threaten the declining traditional dance forms?

I think we shouldn’t look at tradition as static, fossilised kind of form… There are myriad art forms across the country… Some reinvent themselves and make themselves relevant; those that don’t, might die – that’s a natural course. The way to keep our inherited forms alive and kicking is by investing in them and trying to transform those.

The onus is to make the work relevant, not maybe for entire masses, but at least for some constituency.

What have been the highlights of the Festival?

The Festival started in 2000. It has developed much since; apart from the performances, this year there were things like colloquium, master classes, dance on camera, writing on dance workshop etc. What are we trying to do is invent an idea that will have a much long-lasting influence on how the art scene is to be. This idea will resurface itself in different forms because lots of artists and connoisseurs are going to take that idea and develop it in their own way according to the context they find themselves in. In that sense it has far-reaching influence on the art and dance scene in the country, and it is hugely successful from that perspective.