Kicking off the Ignite Festival at Kamani Auditorium yesterday evening, Anusha Lall – Festival Director – put things in perspective. Ignite, she said, was a festival centred on contemporary ‘Indian’ dance – both by artists from within India and abroad. All the artists and performances engage with Indian-ness in a variety of ways: either experimenting with traditional forms, or forging connections with other cultures/countries or – as in the case of Shobana Jeyasingh (though this is not the only thread that draws her in) – working with Asian/Indian experience in a different culture, drawing on forms both remembered and found.
Shobana Jeyasingh is a dance icon in the UK. And unfortunately, though I lived there for three years, I was in Wales – far away from the dance circuit that her company moves in. So never had the opportunity to see her work. But hear about it constantly, I did. And this is her first tour to India since she set up her company in 1988. By training she is a Bharatnatyam dancer, who moved from Chennai to London. But her work situates itself squarely in a very different socio-cultural and political experience. The double bill we were witness to yesterday – Faultline and Bruise Blood – are both inspired by extremely unusual – even harsh – triggers for dance as we in India would see it.
