Anayaasa

The whole idea is to put together a dance performance without too much toil and stress. Something at the end of which I could say- oh, that was no big deal. And feel good about it.

I had a few ideas of how that could work in the choreography of the dance.

One idea was that the performance stage created the performance. To me the stage conveys the information to the audience that art is happening and invites the audience to witness it. Hence if we put together a stage and lights and invited an audience, that would cover a large part of the dance production. So we did that.

A stimulus for what is to constitute the dance itself came from the trauma of learning dance from teachers in childhood. Of being told how my sitting was wrong, my hands were bent too much or too little, of the endless criticisms that made me as young dancer shiver in terror. If I tore every external feedback did my body still dance? Did it have a language of its own ? I believed that it did. I picked a baseline stimulus: some music. Each of the dancers was free to explore their own movements to that music. Each of us came up with a movement language that we felt was authentic for us and our body.

The next step was to explore dancing in a group with all our different movements. Simultaneously we were to think of the performance aspect of the dance which had so far been inward looking. What are the ways we could enhance the aesthetics our presentation keeping true to the concept of individual dance language? There was an unexpected attrition of dancers at this part of the choreography which made me give it a tighter external structure. I invite you to find out for yourself.

I hope to see you at the performance on Aug 6th at Spaces, Besant Nagar, at 6 PM.