Padmini Chettur’s ‘Wall Dancing’ is about concrete imagination. It is about deconstructing the significance of the wall not as a partition or a block but as a solid structure that takes the weight of ideas and emotions.
Known for her contemporary works that are simple allegories to complex philosophies, Padmini detached herself from the classical foundation that she received as a student of Bharatanatyam to define movement and expression in her own distinct way.
After being associated with the celebrated choreographer Chandralekha for a few years, Padmini ventured into an inward and outward journey, analysing her thoughts and the world view to come up with her own creative vocabulary. From her first choreographic work ‘Fragility’ in 2001 to her latest ‘Wall Dancing’, Padmini has traversed the gamut of emotions, researched movements and reworked technique to define space and art as she experienced and visualised them.
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“Wall Dancing is a deliberate attempt to move away from the proscenium and interact with the audience,” says Padmini. The three-hour performance shifts the focus of dancers dealing with the gravitational force of the floor to the line, tension and energy of the wall.
Not comfortable with the idea of a recital being merely treated as entertainment for passive spectators, Padmini wanted to free her intense work of the monotony of a concert hall and be on the same plane with the audience.
“People can enter and exit at any time of the performance. They can sit, stand or walk around the large room. The five performers (P. Akila, Aditi Bheda, Aarabi, Palani and Madhusree Basu) will sequentially engage different surfaces/corners of the room, allowing the audience to view them from different perspectives. The work is designed around the interplay of stillness and movement, body and wall, process and performance,” explains Padmini lucidly.
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Wall Dancing is presented by Basement 21, the platform that presents the contemporary in art and is committed to the growth of new-age concepts.
The performance will be held at Focus Art Gallery, 11, Bishop Wallers Avenue (South), CIT Colony, Alwarpet on December 4 and 5 (6.30 p.m. to 9.30 p.m.).