For the past eight years, the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) has been holding the Contemporary Dance Season to showcase performances that combine innovation and cutting-edge choreography. In its ninth season this year, NCPA has some dance programmes by prominent artistes, which are not only entertaining and engaging but thought-provoking as well.
Performances galore
The two-day festival that is currently underway commenced with a dance performance by dancer Mayuri Upadhyay and her organisation Nritarutya Dance Company. She will present Tula , a theatrical journey to celebrate stories of the past. The production is a dialogue between dance and mythology, taking ideas and stories from our roots and contextualising them to today, while bridging the different age groups. On the second day, three performances have been lined up by Pooja Pant Dance Company, Cyrus Khambatta Dance Company and Sumeet Nagdev Dance Academy. NCPA Dance head Swapnokalpa Dasgupta says, “The Contemporary Dance Season is an amalgamation of different styles and thought-provoking concepts in contemporary dance that will surely leave the audience spell bound with the array of talent the performances have to offer.”
Contemporary and relevant
Dasgupta emphasises on contemporary themes and ideas, Pooja Pant, for instance, is presenting a kathak recital titled ‘Story of a T-shirt’ that showcases the harmful affects of the chemicals used for textile production. The performance was devised by Pant, when she came across research by a company called Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals (ZDHC). “I realised that there are many hazardous chemicals used in textile production. Then ZDHC also approached me to create a piece on it. It is quite a dry subject otherwise, and I wanted to create something that is entertaining and at the same time, brings attention to the fact that there are these chemicals are so harmful for the environment,” she says. Easier said than done, of course. “It was quite challenging!” she admits with a laugh. “I am a kathak dancer, so the vocabulary was kathak for me. I used theatre and kathak together to visualise a concept and story where we are talking of all this through the perspective of a T-shirt,” she informs.
Combining dance, music, dialogue, costume, make up and stage techniques in his production ‘Dashanan’, Nagdev takes inspiration from Ramayan’s mythological figure Ravana. “Ravana was a name given to Dashanan by Lord Indra, because of his loud roar. He was born Dashanan because he had ten qualities,” says Nagdev. The dancer was fascinated by the idea that while Ravana was seeking immortality, he was tricked by the Gods into getting killed. “The more you strive towards perfection, the more imperfect the world around you becomes. So even when you burn him every year, Dashanan is killed but what about the Ravana inside you that wants to be heard?” asks Nagdev. The artistes hope that the messages and ideas conveyed through their performances will hit home. “Art, after all, is cathartic,” says Pant.
Contemporary Dance Season 2019 on November 9 at Experimental Theatre, NCPA.
