Responses to screening of Matthew Bourne's 'Swan Lake' for Ranan Repertory

Indrani Roy Misra and Katy Roy - regular guests at Ranan events and screenings at repertory sessions - on the Ranan Repertory session where we watched Matthew Bourne's version of Swan Lake at Ranan, 27 October 2010, preceded by a brief discussion on ballet in general and Bourne's work in that context.

"It’s the other face of a swan. It’s another face of ballet. A tale yes, but without the ‘fairy story’.  It is down to earth. Downright beautiful and unforgettable. Mathew Bourne has turned the story of Swan Lake on its head without losing either the balance or the magic."

[Indrani Roy Misra]

"Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake. What? Really? You mean the one with the all male swans? Seriously? I read about it somewhere in the last century and was intrigued. Then I watched the film Billy Eliot ;  the brief glimpse right at the end of The Swan, leaping on to the stage to Tchaikovsky’s familiar music – how exciting, how I would love to see this."

[Katy Lai Roy] 

'ADDA AT RANAN' - Creating Dance: Content, Context, Confluence

As part of INTERFACE 2010 - the biennial performance festival presented by Sapphire Creations Dance Workshop - Ranan hosted an adda with performance scholars, critics and participating artists - - Sadanand Menon (performance scholar) - Sunil Kothari (dance critic) - Jacek Luminski (dancer/choreographer from Poland) The varied adda audience and participants comprised dancers, critics, students, musicians and others. Click the image for photographs.

Sadanand Menon's opening comments:


This is a very, very comfortable size of a group for us to have a conversation. The idea itself is fantastic – to have these meetings and informal gatherings. It’s as important as working with the body – working with the mind, sharing ideas. And obviously even more important than just writing. I’ve been peripherally part of the dance world for some years, and the general experience is that there is a lot of conversation behind people’s backs – but nothing in front. And that is very, very important for anything positive to develop. Unfortunately the media scene in India at the moment does not encourage too much reflection around arts practice, whether fine art, literary art or performing art. So we’re left to ourselves to discuss our own work. It’s not in the newspapers, and publications are few and far between. We don’t really have a sufficient bank of Indian scholars who are reflecting on Indian dance. Much writing on Indian dance in the last five years has been happening abroad. We are in that kind of a context. So in this context, the theme that has been proposed of looking at the creating of dance, trying to understand the beginning point is very important.