Prithvi Summertime workshops by Ranan

16 to 20 May 2009, British Airways Guest House, Mumbai
Ranan conducts two workshops for two age groups focussing on rhythm and movement. Brief details are given below. For more, browse through all the workshops information on http://www.prithvitheatre.org/
Rhythms and Rhymes
This lively workshop for 6-9 year olds brings together simple rhymes, basic rhythm concepts and movement drawing from the fundamentals of dance. Short 'kavits' (poems) describing well-loved episodes from the life of Krishna will form the springboard for encouraging children to write their own short poems, set them to rhythm and 'choreograph' them.
Taal-alala
Rhythm, movement, voice, sound, numbers . this workshop for 10-12 year olds explores the magic of performance when all these energies come together. Working with rhythm concepts ranging from the simple to the complex, static numbers suddenly become dynamic, jumping, leaping and spinning madly suddenly becomes dance, and creating and responding to beats suddenly becomes the pulse of life.

Labbaik-Music, Movement, Madness @ Prithvi Theatre, Mumbai

On: 15 May 2009 at 4pm and 7pm.

‘Labbaik’ is a Persian word meaning –Bravo! This performance communicates the joy and infectious pulse of Kathak to children and parents featuring a collage of pieces: ‘kavits’ on the life of Krishna performed in Kathak as well as energetic pure dance pieces focussing on strong rhythms and the ‘wow’ aspects of Kathak such as footwork and spins.
Kavits in Kathak are poems recited and performed to simple and catchy rhythms, demanding quick and precise switches of pace, mood and character from the performer. Performative poems relating Krishna’s encounter with the poisonous snake Kaliya, or an exasperated maiden’s vow to dress Krishna as a girl during Holi – these short and rhythmic vignettes form ideal entrance points to the magic of Indian classical dance.
The pure abstraction of rhythm and movement has always been Kathak’s realm. Pieces choreographed in pure Kathak to music with a strong percussive – yet purely classical – base, using complex footwork, sharp lines and dizzying spins – spiced with an injection of film – make this attractive and pulsing world the very heartbeat of life.

Cast & Credits :
Concept, Choreography and Performance – Debashree Bhattacharya, Vikram Iyengar
Light Design and Production: Amlan Chaudhuri
Cinematography: Ranjan Palit
Editing: Nina Normann

Tickets are available at Prithvi Theatre

Performance and Society: Weekly Programmes on Radio JU, 90.8FM

The next two episodes of Ranan's collaboration with the Jadavpur University Community Radio continue to focus on the issue of 'Youth Violence'. The next episode deals with 'Youth Voices on Youth Violence', followed by a discussion centring around the 'violence' inherent in dance reality shows on television. Details of the programmes are given below.

'Youth Voices on Youth Violence'
Friday, 8 May 2009, 5.30pm
repeat broadcast Saturday, 9 May 2009, 2.30pm
Moderated by Soham and Sohini, students of the Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University, the discussion centres around definitions and reasons for youth violence. The programme presents diverse views from students of St. Xavier's College and Jadavpur University.

'The Culture of Dance Reality Shows'
Friday, 15 May 2009, 5.30pm
repeat broadcast Saturday, 16 May 2009, 2.30pm
This programme asks crucial questions about the contemporary and all-pervasive culture of dance reality shows on television. What actually is a reality show? Does it inflict a sort of psychological violence on the young participants through the intense competitive pressure? Does it encourage building bridges between communities or more regionalism? What are the pros and cons and transparency of the voting process?
Moderated by Shubhodeep Chakroborty, guest speakers include producer-director Raj Chakroborty, artist Kohinoor Sen Barat and participants and parents who have been appeared on dance reality shows.

Responses to the above programmes may be emailed either to us or to radioju@gmail.com 

Ranan's Collaboration with Radio JU (90.8 FM)

Ranan is delighted to announce our collaboration with Jadavpur University's Community Radio Channel available on 90.8 FM.
We sincerely believe that as performing artists and responsible members of a civil society, we have a role to play in responding to and even helping shape the society we live in today. Today's world is beset with problems and issues of every kind. How do performing artists / performing arts respond to and represent these - if at all? It is with this basic query that we approached Radio JUs with the idea of a weekly programme around Performance and Society: how do the two relate to each other, if and how issues we confront on a daily basis find any reflection in performance, what are the dangers of such representation, perception and communication, do we run the risk of trivialising or justifying issues that are extremely complex?
The weekly programme on Radio JU will bring together artists, scholars, commentators, audience, programme organisers and others to discuss a variety of contemporary issues through the optic of the performing arts.

The first series of episodes focuses on the very contemporary issue of 'Youth Violence'. The inaugural episode featured a panel discussion moderated by Samantak Das with theatre directors and others addressing two fundamental questions: What is Youth Violence? How can / may one deal with it on stage?

The second episode addressed echoes of youth violence in Peter Shaffer's play Equus and in Ranan's recent dance-theatre production of the same. The programme featured an informal conversation between Vikram Iyengar (director of Ranan's production), Anjum Katyal (arts editor and writer), and S. V. Raman (Programme Officer of Max Mueller Bhavan). Underlying the discussion were excerpts of the original music of our production composed by Neel Adhikari.

Premiere shows of 'Equus'

The premiere of Ranan’s dance and theatre staging of Peter Shaffer’s landmark play‚ Equus last week received a standing ovation. Three shows remain - 17‚ 18 and 19 April at Gyan Manch. Tickets @ Rs. 60/- are available at the hall everyday from 1pm to 7pm.

The photographs above are from the second show on Sunday, 12 April 2009. To view the full suite of images, please visit http://picasaweb.google.com/iyengar.vikram/EquusARananProductionSunday12April2009#

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http://www.facebook.com/n/?event.php&eid=64139743753&mid=43a825G3c0eb07aG2a8c13G7, to invite others to the event, share and rate photographs and leave comments.
for any further information, please email us at rananindia@gmail.com or call 9831256730.

Equus Preview - The Telegraph

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090410/jsp/entertainment/story_10799619.jsp

‘EQUINE VOYEURS’

  Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said [Job 38:1]    Hast thou given the horse strength? Hast thou clothed his neck with   thunder? The glory of his nostrils is terrible. He paweth in the valley,   and rejoiceth in his strength: he goeth on to meet the armed men. He mocketh at fear, and is not affrighted; neither turneth he back from the sword. The quiver rattleth against him, the glittering spear and the shield. He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage: He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha. [Job 39: 19-25] [qtd. in Equus p. 22]  


These verses from the book of Job describe the majesty and mystery of the creatures that fascinate Alan Strang, the 17-year-old protagonist of Peter Shaffer's play. When the play opens, this young man's case is being presented to a psychiatrist. We learn only the bare facts: one night, at a stable in Winchester, he blinded six horses with a metal spike. We gradually learn that long before the night of the mutilation, these animals played such a central part in Alan's life - in fact, all the key moments in his development were marked by encounters with horses.  


Ordinary horses are transformed into deities, whom Alan worships according to a ritual of his own devising. As a deity, Equus represents a composite of Christian theology, Greek mythology, and pagan ritual, both old world and new. He clearly possesses the paradoxical nature of the Christ figure. Like Jesus, Equus "is in chains for the sins of the world and he lives in all horses". In exchange for taking him out of his chains, "Equus promises Alan salvation by making the two of them into one: horse and rider shall be one beast". Just as Christ accepted humiliation and crucifixion, curbing the power that could destroy his persecutors, Equus is willing to be a "Godslave", submitting his strength and power, so vividly described in the book of Job, to human control—to the bridle and the bit—in order to defeat the enemy. 
  Alan's ritual and his ideas about horses also draw heavily on the book of Revelation. Revelation 9:17 describes "the heads of horses [which] were as the heads of lions," with fire and smoke and brimstone issuing out of their mouths" —and verse 19 speaks of the "power of the horses [that] is in their mouth"; in chapter 6, the verses describing the four horsemen of the apocalypse attribute the power of speech to the horse. Finally, Alan quotes the lines from Revelation 19:11-12 which describe the horses' eyes: "And I saw the heaven opened; and behold, a white horse, and he that sat thereon called Faithful and True. And his eyes are a flame of fire and he hath a name written which none knoweth but he himself". The persona of Equus also bears the strong influence of Greek mythology, in which horses were considered to be of divine origin, issuing from the union of Poseidon and Demeter. 


But it was not Shaffer's intention to simply create a composite deity. Equus, in Shaffer's words is "the name one individual gives to his impulse for worship." (Vogue, File 49) It is this impulse itself, in all its primitive powerful and mystical glory, that Shaffer sees being systematically repressed and destroyed in the modern world. The enemies of this incarnation of the god Equus are identified in Alan's ritual incantations: they are "The Hosts of Hoover. The Hosts of Philco. The House of Remington and all it tribe!" They are "The Hosts of Bowler. The Hosts of Jodhpur" (64). These unlikely minions dominate Alan's "rather dreary and colourless provincial life" which according to Shaffer, consists of "working with not much to look forward to in an electrical and kitchenware shop, with an unimaginative but kindly father and an unimaginative but kindly mother (who are much the same although one happens to believe in God and one does not)" (Vogue, File 49). 


The world of equitation consists of a one-sided demonstration of the rider's ability to control his horse. In Alan's world, horse and rider must become one—like a centaur or the mounted conquistadors who were initially taken for gods by the Incas. This union is at the same time religious (like the Christian union of god and man) and sexual; and for Shaffer it was important that the two be considered inseparable. He was fascinated by the historical interrelations of sex and religion, and the awe of early religions before the mysteries of fertility and reproduction, which often made sex a central part of their rituals.  


In Equus, through the intermediary of the mythical horse, Alan Strang succeeded in recapturing his own joy and a sense of meaning that Shaffer sees as having abandoned the Western world. He is able to feel both genuine passion and pain. Unfortunately, however, in the process of accessing the elemental and the ecstatic, Alan has gone beyond the boundaries of socially acceptable behaviour and Dysart, acting as the representative of social norms, has no choice but to excise this part of Alan's existence and banish Equus from his mind. 


Shaffer was especially drawn to the theories of Carl Jung. His conception of Alan's ability to truly feel was influenced by Jung's characterization of "neurosis as an escape from legitimate pain" (Vogue, File 49). In an interview, he remarked, "Until I read that, I hadn't quite been aware that there was such a thing as legitimate pain. I think Jung is one of the greatest minds of the 20th century, [because] Jung is so intensely grounded in myth." Shaffer continues: "Most people do not realize—and by 'realize' I mean they do not feel intensely, from day to day, in any way that truly affects them—that we did not begin the world, that we are repositories, walking encyclopedias, of all human experience, that we contain within us, within our heads and without our genes, the whole of human history. The more one comes to realize that the cells of one's brain contain endless archetypal images that stretch back beyond the Stone Age, the more one can come to an immense and important sense of who one is, for himself, instead of just a little worried package of responses and reflexes, sexual drives and frustrations" (Vogue, File 49-50). 


Dysart's profound envy of Alan's ability to worship primitively and passionately, is the source of the play's tragic conflict. Shaffer has commented that "Tragedy obviously does not lie in a conflict of Right and Wrong, but in a collision between two different kinds of Right: in this case between Dysart's professional obligation to treat a terrified boy who has committed a dreadful crime, and Alan's passionate capacity for worship.  


If Alan's creation of Equus the Godslave, and the psycho-sexual union of boy and horse could be considered a problematical solution to modern alienation, no such ambiguity has been attached to Shaffer's creation of Equus as a piece of theatre that recovered the mystery and ritual of ancient Greek performance, whether it be the Dionysian revels or classical tragedy. It is actually in one of Shaffer's more recent plays, also with a classically inspired title, The Gift of the Gorgon (1992), that the lasting impact of Equus is described: 

The theatre [is] the only religion that can never die . . . at its height, centuries ago here in England just as much as Greece, the theatre gave us faith and True Astonishment - as religion is supposed to do. The playwright set up his play like Athena's shield: a great shining surface in which you can see all truth by reflection! The audience assembled before it, and peered into it together, in communion. They saw themselves enlarged-made legendary as well as particular, in all their glory and ghastliness. It faced them with towering shapes of their most intense and terrible desires. Undeniable pictures, formed of blazing words. They came away astounded. Scared. Exalted. Seeing themselves, perhaps for the first time, which they'd always thought ordinary-lit with the fire of transformation. 


Extracted from 

  Equine Voyeurs: Myth, Psychoanalysis and Consumer Culture in Equus

  by Angela C. Pao, Department of Comparative Literature, Indiana University