For Claire Le Michel, a contemporary dancer and writer from France, Ayurveda, yoga and the many vibrant aspects of Indian culture is bliss. Now she has an opportunity to blend that with her passion, contemporary dance. Claire along with city-based Karnatriix band has come together to create a music-dance fusion named ‘Be the change’. “I came to know about Johnny [John Antony] through our mutual friend Blodsow, an artist. I had told him in a vague manner that I wanted to do something like this so as to connect with the culture here and make new friends as well in the process, ” says Claire, who runs a dance company ‘Compagnie un soir alleurs’, in France.
The Paris-based traveller-dancer, as she would like to be known, met John in February and things have fallen in place pretty fast since then.
They have already made a short video of the fusion performance set in the courtyard of John’s heritage bungalow at Poojappura.
John says, “ I always wanted to make music with dance. This is something no one expects from Karnatriix and I think it would be a refreshing way to enjoy our music.”
The video, shot by John’s friend Chandrashkehar Ramesh and edited by bassist Rahul CR, is a perfect blend of Claire’s subtle movements, John Antony’s melodic guitar notes and Sruthy Sasidharan’s and Akhil Jayachand’s improvised vocals.
Taking cues
Claire has taken cues from several activities that she is involved in like yoga, acting and French boxing. “I didn’t really think all of it through beforehand. Much of it is improvised. I let myself be guided by the music and the environment. For me dance is expressing yourself and to change into the person that you want always to be, and that is the theme behind ‘Be the change’,” explains Claire.
She adds that she sings during performances as it lets her feel the music. Claire is also a skilled singer, trained in Armenian music.
The performance in the video is just a sample of a series of such pieces which they plan to perform live this year. They have contacted Alliance Francaise and if everything goes well, there will be a string of performances sometime in October or November. There won’t be any percussions for the performance.
John will play the lead electric guitar, Rahul will be on bass guitar and Akhil will provide backing vocals. “Claire will actually be singing during the live performance and we are still working on how to pull that off. We are aiming for a 45-minute performance broken into periods. Each piece will be a continuation of the one before it and would deliver different emotions. Most of it will be regular Karnatriix numbers,” John says.
The dance video will be released on YouTube today (March 25).
