On stage are five dancers, in different stages of aggravation: one flails her hands — increasingly wildly — to the electronic bass that thrums in the room, while another sits as still as a predator on the prowl, swivelling slowly on his spot. To say that German contemporary dance group, Damaged Goods’ piece titled Violet is abstract, would be a laughable understatement.
It has been touted as American choreographer Meg Stuart’s most abstract piece yet, and is making its South Asian premiere with its India tour, from Mumbai to now Chennai, and then onwards to Sri Lanka. Since its creation in July 2011, the Damaged Goods group has performed Violet 80 times; mostly in Europe, and some shows in South America. Though Meg is still in Brussels, here in Chennai are assistant choreographer Joséphine Evrard, and the five dancers: Mor Demer, Márcio Kerber Canabarro, Kotomi Nishiwaki, Renan Martins de Oliveira, and Roger Sala Reyner.
The dance is about showcasing the forces of nature, and how energetically physical matter takes one form after another, explains Josephine over an email interview. “It has a lot to do with alchemical and transformative processes,” she says, adding that the five dancers are constantly channelising energies that resonate inside them. “The performers exist as five entities, and at the same time they belong to the same organism together. Nothing is isolated from anything,” she says.
In this case, it becomes paramount for the dancers to feed off each others’ energies. In the years that Violet has been touring, the cast has changed. However, “What is really precious is the way the dancers have each met through Violet . Their interaction changes the chemistry of the dance, and the chemistry of their dance changes their interaction — it goes in both directions. They have to be open to rediscovering themselves and the others,” she says.
When Violet was conceptualised, the world was undergoing tectonic political shifts, points out Josephine. “It was the years after the last big financial crisis that started in 2007, with the Lehman Brothers’ crash in USA. In 2010 and 2011 there were uprisings, the Occupy Wall Street protests, the Arab Spring, the tsunami in Japan… It was a time of big turmoil in many places, a chain of global reactions.”
These events had a huge impact on the creation process. The result is this immersive piece, that revels in the power of both natural forces and humanity. To be sure, it is as abstract as it gets, and is perhaps not for fans of traditional direct storytelling.
The dance is accompanied by live music by Brendan Dougherty, who produced the tunes simultaneously with the choreography. “The music is really like the sixth body. It is a real partner, that the five performers dance with, not to,” she says. “It’s one of the elements that create the space of resonance for Violet to manifest itself. Sometimes it feels as if the dancers are making the music with their moves.”
After the India tour, the show will move to Colombo, Sri Lanka, and then Karachi, Pakistan. But why the name Violet ? “It is the color at the end of the visible spectrum of light between the blue and the invisible ultraviolet. A zone where both visibility and invisibility are together, a space where maybe unexpected force can be created.”
Violet by Damaged Goods will be performed at Sir Mutha Venkatasubba Rao Concert Hall on February 15, from 7 pm. Free passes are available at Goethe-Institut, Nungambakkam.
