No time to pause

Dancer Padmini Chettur and musician Maarten Visser talk to Shonali Muthalaly on productions beyond the stage and their recent performance in the city

November 25, 2014 07:11 pm | Updated 07:11 pm IST

THE CULTURE CONNECT: Contemporary dancer Padmini Chettur and her husband, saxophone player Maarten Visser. Photo: R. Ravindran

THE CULTURE CONNECT: Contemporary dancer Padmini Chettur and her husband, saxophone player Maarten Visser. Photo: R. Ravindran

The parkour artists scale a giant web. They climb in time to the music. Except it’s not music: more a series of determinedly unmelodic sounds.

Four auto-rickshaws rattle towards the front gate of the Goethe Institut. Musicians clamber in. In a Pied Piper move, the audience is drawn into the building, following a dancer holding what looks like a noisy radio. From the library, we listen to the musicians play from the autos via mobile phones, amplified on what turns out to be a cheap music dock, judging by the jarring sound quality.

“What the heck is this?” whispers a member of the bewildered audience. “Art?” ventures another. Still, they follow the performance from room to room, albeit reluctantly. At first. Five hours later, Pause/Play by Basement 21 concludes on the terrace with yet another installation and — admittedly — a still confused audience. However, now, they’re also intrigued.

A case of the Emperor’s new clothes? Work that is “contemporary” tends to make Indian audiences nervous. Yet, Pause/Play , put together by Basement 21’s core team, dancers Padmini Chettur and Preethi Athreya, musician Maarten Visser and actor/director Pravin Kannanur, drew an interestingly diverse audience: students and young professionals, artists and auto drivers.

The performance demonstrated how Padmini’s interests are changing, as she moves away from the deliberately challenging stage performances she’s best known for. Performances famously celebrated by European audiences, but criticised by Indian ones who found them too slow, too abstract and too unfamiliar.

As we settle down for a chat the next day, she and her husband Maarten look tired from the rigours of Pause-Play . “We’re still recovering,” she smiles, going on to explain the piece. “The idea was to take over a building and interrupt the flow of activity.” She adds, “I’ve begin to distance myself from making proscenium works. I’m tired of passive audiences who sit back and want to be given things.”

She says, “Yes, even close colleagues come to me sometimes and say, ‘I didn’t get it’.” However, she seems largely unconcerned. “My work is inclusive for anyone who has the willingness and openness of mind to tackle it.” She adds thoughtfully, “Now, I’m more interested in teaching and studio practice. How do I take this body to this intense level of awareness: That’s the trajectory of my work. Sometimes it becomes something I can share with the public. Then I do. But I’ve lost interest in creating big productions.”

Her background is familiar to most Chennaiites. Years of Bharatanatyam, which she began learning at six. Then, she worked with Chandralekha for 10 years. “Her work was very much within Bharatanatyam grammar, with the disciplines of kalari and yoga. I was completely seduced and sucked into that space. We were challenged constantly.”

Maarten also started from a fairly traditional space. “Growing up in Holland, I started learning music from the radio.” He went on to study at the Brabants Conservatorium: five years of Western classical training. “But I left in four,” he shrugs. Why? “I was done.”

While deciding what to do next, he attended a Carnatic music concert. “I was intrigued by the vocalist. And I didn’t get it at all — so I decided to come to India to learn.” He began with a teacher in Chennai. He pauses. “That didn’t last very long.” Padmini bursts into laughter. “He just couldn’t get used to the guru-shishya-ism.”

“I found myself basically on the road with no money,” continues Maarten. Then he met musician Paul Jacob. “We started this band: Funky Bodhi. That’s how I met Padmini.” Padmini continues, “We did a small solo thing together in 1999.” Then came ‘Fragility’. “A German curator funded it — and we opened in Holland. It was our big breakthrough,” says Padmini, adding, “We were just babes in the woods then — touring all these big European theatres.”

That’s when the European audiences embraced them? “To be honest, I don’t think it appealed to European audiences. I think it appealed to curators looking for a big breakthrough. It was less obviously connected to an aesthetic that one could locate in India.” Her work, she says, was more concerned with “The creation of a new language of the body.”

It also required the creation of a new language of sound. “I had to change,” says Maarten, “I made all this music, which Padmini rejected. It was too Western. Maybe too melodic. That was the worst year for me,” he sighs dramatically, setting her off into a peal of laughter. “After a few dark weeks, I decided to come back to the essence. I took out the melody. And what we were left with was pure sound.”

Which brings us back to that Auto Quartet. “Tell her the story behind it,” says Padmini, prodding Maarten. “Ok. Have you heard of Stockhausen? He’s one of the most famous composers in the world. In 1995, he performed the Helicopter String Quartet: four helicopters each carrying one member of a string quartet.” Padmini interjects, “Now this, this is the Emperor’s new clothes. He was so famous, he could do anything and people would say it’s brilliant.” Maarten continues, “That’s what inspired me…” he pauses, looking hesitant. “Tell her, tell her, tell her,” laughs Padmini. “Well… this is the third world version. The Auto Quartet,” he concludes, almost apologetically.

This is why the couple makes work that is significant: they create performances that they enjoy and identify with, instead of pandering to a mass audience. “We have had half our audience walk out angry, but the other half love us,” says Maarten. Padmini adds, “I need to provoke. And I’m happy if people start to think a bit. To ask questions about their own need for speed. For embellishment. For decoration.”

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