Chaired by Sadanand Menon, the morning session presented varied approaches and views on the idea of a network from five different voices and backgrounds: policy researcher Anita Cherian, India Foundation for the Arts Director Anmol Vellani, Asia-Europe Foundation representative Anupama Shekhar, myself as practitioner and director of a performance group, and Sanjna Kapoor as one of the initiators of the India Theatre Forum. In addition there were inputs from several others including Anita Ratnam whose pioneering narthaki.com is a boon for the Indian dance community the world over, and Pooja Sood of the Khoj Artists Collective who shared her experience of a network based in the world of visual arts. In the afternoon session we broke up into five groups and talked about various divisions of a network – assuming one was conceivable, possible, necessary and deserving – such as funding, possible activities, structure interventions in policy, etc. Mr. Jawhar Sarkar – Secretary, Department of Culture – joined us for this session, and his inputs about government policies and plans really underlined for us that this is a potentially very powerful moment for all arts practitioners: where we have a proactive Secretary who is actually personally interested in the furtherance of arts and artists support on the basis of what the community expresses as needs, rather than what often disconnected government committees may decide. And while the two sessions obviously did not result in the miraculous formation of a utopian dance network, several questions have been tabled, discussed and provoked. And that’s a start that we – as a community – need to take forward. The ball really is in our court – we can’t carry on blaming the rest of the world for not looking after us without asking the very basic questions of what we have done to look after ourselves or deserve support in the first place!
Being very much a part of this seminar meant I missed out on the two masterclasses by Chris Lechner and also the second Emerging Artists Showcase. Once again, though, a dancer friend told me that she was severely disappointed having seen the latter, and that – again – it was very Gati Residency led. Gati needs to understand that decisions like this will only undermine its own reputation and the reputation of the festival as serious, non-partisan concerns committed to the development and furtherance of a contemporary dance culture in India. I refuse to believe that there are no interesting and dynamic young choreographers in the rest of the country – choreographers who have never had anything to do with Gati and maybe never even heard of them, but who are working in their own spheres and forging fresh ideas and pathways. This is something that absolutely must be addressed if the credibility of Ignite is to grow from strength to strength.
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| Preethi Athreya, Sweet Sorrow |
The first performance I did see was Preethi Athreya’s Sweet Sorrow, which I had missed it when she brought it to Calcutta in September. It was an absolutely quirky delight! With kinds and levels of sorrow as her starting point, Preethi crafted a tapestry of movement and sound which played with juxtaposing tempos in various ways. Several sections were performed in silence or to the beat of a metronome. Playing with projections intelligently, we were often brought up short with subtle choices: what we assumed was her shadow carried on moving or started moving out of time with her all of a sudden, and then returned to being ‘part of her body’. I confess that I did find the short section early on with a chair as suddenly lacking in energy and purpose, but that was the only moment when I felt disconnected. She made brilliant use of the Bharatnatyam technique as well, and the deliciously dead-pan manner in which she managed to make self-deprecating fun of how Bharatnatyam is often ‘explained’ today through enacting gesture with words existed side by side with the heartache of loss that the form can truly touch and evoke in the most authentic manner. Distilling the form down to interpret a well known ‘item’ of Bharatnatyam to just beats of the feet in aramandi and the simplest of hand movements brought me face to face with those moments when one is struck dumb with a utter despair and shock, and yet internally railing, raving and tearing ones hair in agonised rage. I have rarely seen such an internal, personal emotion expressed so powerfully without using the external indicators of emotion that Indian classical dance does so well. It was moving and amusing, and did not take itself self-importantly seriously – which is so often my problem with ‘experimental’ or ‘contemporary’ dance (several examples of which were thrust upon us in the name of Emerging Choreography at this very festival).
The last performance of the festival, though, disappointed me: Incident Compromised by Sudesh Adhana along with a Norwegian acrobat. The premise of the idea of prisons and imprisonment was an interesting point of departure, and Sudesh first conceived and created this work when he was a student of Contemporary Dance in Oslo. The piece, unfortunately, has remained a good student piece showing no signs of coming of age. There was a lot of bumping around, butting each other and violent acrobatics and a fair amount of tongue-in-cheek humour performed engagingly enough, no doubt. But there was also a huge amount of aimless walking about and lack of specificity and focus apart from the gratuitous rope work that I’m quite tired of now. And not even rope work that would wow anyone – rather tired stuff. A friend of mine from a theatre background asked me, quite rightly, after the show suddenly decided to end (it was as if they said, okay enough of dribbling football now. I’ve got to get home): “So when does movement become dance?” Or choreography, for that matter. I’ve seen spectacular and beautifully moving work with circus acrobats crafted and choreographed by performance directors, work that had clarity of thought and direction which is what makes it theatre (or dance) rather than just circus virtuosity. Everyone knows of Cirque du Soleil, for example. And this work is just two guys playing around and dabbling in stuff they know. Not that I expect them to be like Cirque du Soleil – Sudesh is just starting out – but I saw no acknowledgment or attempt to actually progress from a cool and forgivably superficial student project into something more with more depth of intent and exploration in content, form and performance. Speaking to Sudesh before I had seen his work, he said he was always interested in finding new movement languages for every project depending on impulse and response. That’s all very fine, but WHO are you then? What is your identity? There must be something – if not a choreographic stamp, then a philosophy, politics, intellectual approach… something that develops and evolves and that defines how and why you work from piece to piece. Otherwise it becomes the dance version of carpetbaggers.
The climax and great highlight of the post-festival part at Max Mueller Bhavan was a comic turn by the inimitable Maya Rao. Forty-five minutes of stand up comedy where she took off on Shobana Jeyasingh and her company in particular, with generous references to Navtej, Preethi, Sudesh and others – who were all there and rolling about with laughter. I’m not going to try and describe it – comedy is never funny unless you were actually there to experience it. But it was a wonderful choice to end the festival. There is such a danger in getting caught up in the idea of importance and taking one’s work seriously – I’ve already said this is a malaise I see in much of new work in dance. And ending on this note of hilarity helped us both let our hair down at the end of a packed four days, and keep our work as artists in perspective. A little poking fun and caricaturing never hurt anyone!
All in all, though, Ignite has been a wonderful and incredibly important moment in the recent history of dance in India, and we cannot let that go. It has to grow, morph, travel year to year, and place to place with regularity and openness. It can truly be a vital catalyst in opening up more avenues in how we think, create, perform and view dance in India today.
Congratulations Gati! You deserve all the kudos you are getting.
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