Fusion of East and West

THE EVENING at Narada Gana Sabha on April 10 seemed to have a chaotic beginning - there were people milling around, honoured guests being ushered in, and audiences till the last minute trying to find vantage places.

Not what one would expect in a programme of modern dance that too by one of America's best known dance companies. The Battery Dance Company and its director and choreographer Jonathan Hollander are not actually strangers to Chennai.

And before the announcements and the accolades started one wondered whether the evening would get going. It did eventually and very well indeed.

The audience was witness to something that was truly an amalgam of dance and music.

Equipped with a live band along with recorded pieces (music composition by Eero Hameenniemi, one of Poland's leading composer), the show began with the haunting vocal by Christine Correa, originally from Bombay and who now lives in New York. Hers is the kind of voice, pure and clear, that needs no accompaniment and provided the dancers with the right mood to put their creativity to test. Giving her minimal support on the piano and percussion were Frank Carlberg and Mike Sarin .

The first piece of the evening interestingly titled Zero.. Two.. Blue.. Heaven.. Seven was multidimensional, loosely based on the poetic phrases of the contemporary American poet, Robert Creeley: the dancers, seven of them, moved with agility. The numbers zero to seven were symbolic of the moods of life - in all its vagaries and beauty. Words and music thus blended along with the jazz idiom to create visuals that had in them the ethos of western tradition of the ballet, the waltz, tango and even a kiddies kind of a romp.

``They are actually different pieces and it's become one,'' Jonathan had explained earlier. ``Each has poetry of its own - words, which in this case is not spoken or signed - and then there is the music, which is worked around it and the choreography around the music. So its three circles of creation,'' he said.

In Mother Goose, the words of Kenneth Rexroth were given an embracing feel where the jazz score by Frank Carlberg delves into the dreamlike quality of images - flowing easily from embraces on the floor into diagonal and circular patterns.

The third piece, the much awaited one, Layapriya, was in fact created in 1997. It is an emotional creation for the choreographer who feels he has put his soul into it. It had rhythm that had the dancers swinging and pirouetting to the beats of the Indian percussionists (Karaikudi Mani Iyer - mridangam and konnakol, G. Harishankar - kanjira, V. Vasan - ghatam, S. S. Kannan - morsing) and Helsinki Philharmonic (with Jurjen Hempeel as conductor). Layapriya was enjoyable for its blend of the East and the West. It was fairly easy to follow and appreciate instead of leaving it all to the imagination. While there was freedom to interpret the pure rhythm the dance conformed to the idiom of a particular style - jazz, ballet and some influences of the Indian dance patterns.

The play of light (Pat Dignan - designer and Barry Steele - technical director and supervisor) and costumes gave subtle allure to the pieces that had a general feel good mood all through. American productions do lay stress on quality but that is not to say they are perfect and flawless - because in this ambience sometimes superficiality creeps in giving one an impression of inadequacy in certain areas.

The dancers - Adrianna Thompson, Tadej Brdnil, Ariel Bonilla, Virgine Victorie Mecene, Nai-Yu Kuo, Maurizo Nardi, Mariella Rietschel - were all exemplary. The group is also visiting Kolkata, Mumbai, Ahmedabad and New Delhi. In Chennai the show was presented by the Utsav Academy of Fine Arts.

CHITRA MAHESH

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