Where is classical dance in India headed? What explorations of tradition are choreographers making currently? What are the new directions they’re trying out? How can different forms be in conversation with each other? With its focus on group choreography, the Nakshatra Dance Festival offers Mumbai audiences an opportunity to unpack these questions.
Elements of nature
Over three days, the festival features performances by six dance companies, two workshops, and a talk by a dance historian. The performances span Kathak, Bharatanatyam, Manipuri, Odissi, and ‘neo-classical’ dance, the latter by the Kolkata-based company Ranan. While Ranan’s dancers train in Kathak, their classical training is supplemented by their individual interests as practitioners and a curiosity about form and narrative. The work they show at Nakshatra, Shunya Se, was one of Ranan’s first pieces, first premiered in 2003. In revisiting the work over 15 years, the choreographer Vikram Iyengar and the Ranan artists have come to it with continually evolving perspectives. Beginning as an exploration of the five elements, performed by five dancers, the piece now looks at three elements — a selection motivated by choreographic coherence — space, fire, and earth. For Iyengar, his recent experience of working with other dance makers has led to a recalibration of his own choreographic questions. “How does one move from representation to abstraction, in working with a classical form? Earlier, it was a very crowded choreography. Over the years, the necessity to fill up content has reduced. There are now more abstract questions, to do with different bodies in space and time,” said Iyengar about the latest version of Shunya Se.
Three of the six choreographers at Nakshatra are Kolkata-based — Iyengar, Odissi choreographer Sharmila Biswas, and the Manipuri choreographer Bimbavati Devi. Sharmila Biswas brings her production Murchhana to the festival. Biswas was introduced to the Murchhana story during her research on practices of percussion in rural Odisha. “It is believed that whenever a man plays the mrudanga , with his whole being immersed in his art, Murchhana, the spirit, enters and possesses the mrudanga , stirring the artist to his very core, and transforming him. The story of Murchhana has a mystical quality, many subtleties, and a rustic spirituality. It weaves in a beautiful story-telling technique through which the narrator effortlessly floats between the real and the make-believe.
It is unique for the ways in which traditional artistes capture the infinite and inexplicable through very simple gestures and words. Our choreography seeks to communicate these myriad qualities,” Biswas said about the origins of the work.
Philosophical musings
With two performances every evening, the festival has a jam-packed schedule. The other choreographers at the festival include the Kathak exponent Rajendra Gangani, and Bharatanatyam practitioners Leela Samson and Rama Vaidyanathan. With her company, Spanda, Samson presents Nadi: The River, a selection of poems that reflect on shared experiences of the flow of water and its suggestion of vitality. During her research process, Samson was struck by the similarity of metaphors used in poetry about rivers across languages. Additionally, she also located a corporeal metaphor in these verses. If the boat was the body, the boatman was the mind. “It is about the crossing of the river, and also about how your mind grows constantly, even though you work with your body all your life, as a dancer. The languages chosen represent this vast country, and the river knits us together, crossing over states and barriers,” Samson said of the philosophical moorings of the work.
For many of the choreographers, their work is also a conscious reinforcement of their relationship with form. Classical dance is beginning to open itself up to discursive explorations of its practices. How do practitioners of these forms respond to these explorations, as artists and observers? In the case of Bharatanatyam, Samson finds its resilience as a style holding it together. She said, “You can actually work with it and not be able to fiddle too much with the core. It is a language which allows for change and expansion. We are seeing it in the hands of various people. I am not too worried about it but one yearns to see some rigour. Many of the beautiful nuances of the form are receding. I sometimes try to reintroduce it into an item which the kids like and hope it will survive through new compositions.”
Nakshatra Dance Festival starts from today the NCPA, Nariman Point until October 14; more details on bookmyshow.com
