Aparnaa Nagesh has been playing with colour for the last six months. Black, brown, white, yellow, gold, you name it. All for choreographing her all-female contemporary dance ensemble, High Kicks’, latest production, Skin . An extension of her introspective journey, it explores what lies beneath societal constructs like race, religion, gender and sexuality. “It has been interesting to understand the process of these constructs, how people experience them,” she says, adding that the internalisation was a “deeply moving, political, and anger-inducing process”.
Back to the future
In the show, debuting tomorrow at Alliance Française, dancers revisit their childhoods, using the premise of a playground to explore how children understand labels and interpret them in social settings. Even as it touches on issues of great relevancy that the artists haven’t tackled before, Nagesh says aesthetically too, the production is different from before. “We don’t have any costume changes, no breaks, and the narrative is constant. Even at times of speech, there is movement; scenarios are being created and flowing on stage,” she says.
The team is pulling out all the stops, playing with shapes in the lighting and musical genres to reflect their constantly evolving work. For instance, Nagesh plans to use square instead of round spotlights, and possibly increasing the number of floor lights to create a new-found dynamism on stage. “All the dancers have worked so hard to bring their inner child to the fore. For me specifically, as a victim of bullying, the trauma I went through has been revisited,” she says.
Moving forward
The topics at hand, she adds, keeps the team inspired, engaging them in “character building, research, discussion, and interactive sessions.” While their last production, Yatra , brought to life popular Hindi film melodies of the recent decades, Skin, she says, “uses a myriad of genres like bol and konnakol -based pieces by musician Viveick Rajagopalan”. The result, Nagesh says, is a production that “switches between physical theatre to contemporary ensemble choreography as well as real, pedestrian movements and theatre”. She has touched on non-Indian influences too, infusing elements of Arabic and Sanskrit with Israeli melodical segments and classical piano strains.
“We definitely want to take it on tour and are programming for that right now,” Nagesh tells us. And if that’s not enough to keep the team busy, they have their hands full with two videos up for digital release and another large production next summer.
Skin will be staged at Alliance Francaise tomorrow at 4 pm and 7 pm. Tickets at ₹300 on in.bookmyshow.com.
