Of countries and styles
|
Performances broke new grounds at the three-day 31st Vikram Sarabhai International Arts Festival
|
The 31st Vikram Sarabhai International Arts Festival ended in Ahmedabad at Natrani, the amphitheatre at the Darpana Academy of Performing Arts this past week.
The three performances, two of which were the end products of a collaboration between visiting artistes and the Darpana performers, led by Mallika Sarabhai, broke new grounds. While the presentation styles were quite uncommon, the themes were not totally unfamiliar ; and therein lay the strength of the performances, for they captured the universality of human perception .
For instance the first performance titled Unfixed by Australian guest artist Dianne Reid about the transient nature of life and destiny, related perfectly to the Indian notion of human life being like a bubble and the material world a mirage.
Reid is a teacher and practitioner of contemporary dance at a number of dance companies in Australia. With her additional prowess of experimenting with synergisms and tensions between dance and dance videos, Reid brought some of this synergy to the performance with tremendous effect. Particularly enchanting and absorbing was the interplay of the human form and its shadow on the stage while a dance video provided the backdrop for the performance.
Unique jugalbandi
This was a fascinating multi-discipline performance that relied on dance videos, reflections of the artistes, music and multi-lingual poetry.
Fusion was of course the hallmark of the concert by Rhythmscape on day two of the festival. With the versatile percussionist Bickram Ghosh in lead, the concert brought together not only the tabla and the mridangam, but also the dhol-mridango from the folk tradition for a unique jugalbandi . The third performance on day three by theatre director Oscar Naters of Peru was based on the legend of Huaca, the flesh of mother earth from which the human race developed.
The performance depicted the quest for returning to the origins through an assimilation of Peruvian and Indian classical dance forms. Visual images were projected on a thin veil that hung between the performers and the audience. Naters explains it as the veil of history that shrouds the past and divides time and space.
This collaborative-interdisciplinary performance was preparedinabout three months time during which Naters and his lead dancer Ana Zavala stayed at Ahmedabad. Appreciative of the response at Darpana, Naters said he was driven to produce this `integro' in India due to similarities between the two regions' landscape and culture. Ask him to elaborate and Naters mentions the similarities between Himalayas and the Andes. No wonder dancer Ana is seen in trance, the state of `duende' in Spanish.
But honestly, it was a joy to see her characteristic lead dance . And as if for Delhi's sake, the Peruvian Embassy will host a solo performance by Ana t Kamani on Jan.18.
NARESH GULATI
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Friday Review
Bangalore
Chennai and Tamil Nadu
Delhi
Hyderabad
Thiruvananthapuram
