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In the article, Kavanagh describes it as a “great show” and then lectures us on the meaning of art, after which he berates the Chennai audience for not wanting to participate in the two-way experience that is art, for not comprehending abstraction and finding a need for a narrative peg.

As the festival organiser who presented this show, I would like to clarify many of the issues that Kavanagh brings up in his article. ‘The Absent Lover’ was not a show of abstraction, but a series of images that had the text of Kalidasa’s play ‘Vikramorvashiya’ in the foreground. If Vasudevan and Kavanagh had wanted to present an abstract performance, then there should have been no need for a storyline plucked from the basket of the exotic Indian cultural past. Don’t they know what abstraction is?

We are told that Chennai audiences are not ready to participate in a “two-way deal” of accessing the sublime through art, as they were at the performance of ‘The Absent Lover’. Chennai audiences have appreciated some of the finest practitioners of contemporary dance over the years.

Over the last 25 years that I have lived here, I have had the joy of seeing the Pilobolus company, the work of Merce Cunningham and John Cage, Pina Bausch, Suzzanne Linke and more recently Josef Nage.

Over the last 10 years, I have had the privilege to co-curate with Anita Ratnam at The Other Festival and present many great dancers such as Rina Schenfield from Israel, Denise Fujiwara in Butoh from Canada and Constanza Marcos, a Brazilian from Germany, all of who got great responses and (in many cases) standing ovations. Besides this, we also presented a slew of young Indian dancers exploring the format of contemporary dance. A wonderful openness has allowed the Chennai audience to assimilate, encourage and engage with these works.

Chennai has been the home and laboratory of the late Chandralekha, a dancer who reinvented the paradigm on how to view abstraction in dance and to review the concepts and metaphors of the totality of Indian culture.

A large portion of Kavanagh’s article is a lesson on the meaning of art citing Gombrich, Shelley and Kandinsky. Yes, we know their work and understand their philosophies. Any discipline requires a deep understanding of the form, a study that allows for it to be absorbed and time and a lot of hard work. This relates to all creative people — be they writers, musicians, painters, dancers or actors.

As the presenter do you have the right to criticise something and then subject the audience to it? The answer is two-fold. The show was presented unseen and I realise that it was an expensive curatorial mistake.

As curators and cultural catalysts, our primary role is to present those we believe in and those whose work we see hope in. We also want to aid the continuing dialogue in the contemporary dance world in India, and more so in Chennai. There are but a handful of practitioners and most of them are in a nascent stage of discovery of form, style and what they want to say with their work. If this is not supported by arts organisations, the movement will take longer to grow strong and have its voice on the world stage. One has to have the faith.

(The author is the founder of Prakriti Foundation)

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