Last night, I tried out a new experience. I watched
the live webcast of the Kalanidhi Festival's evening performances, featuring
Nova Dance (Toronto) and Sadhya Dance Company (India). The Kalanidhi Festival is exploring a wonderful
direction this year- that of livestreaming some of its performances so that
viewers can watch them remotely. I decided to give this option a try last night.
I write about this in the context of two recent
experiences that have shaped the way I perceived the livestreamed performances.
Firstly, two weeks ago, I attended the Dance Film workshop offered by Kaeja d' Dance.
The workshop drew my attention to camera angles and framing of the body,
especially the dancing body. Allen Kaeja
pointed out during the workshop that the camera cannot replicate the experiences
of the human eye. His words came back to me as I watched these two unique dance
pieces on my laptop. Secondly, as recently as two days ago (Thursday evening) I
watched the opening night of the festival in the same space, the Fleck Dance Theatre
at Harbourfront live, so I have a sense of scale and size of the actual
performance space, and a fairly recent visual memory of watching dancing in the
space. These personal reflections on the third evening's performances are thus
not a reflection of my experience of the live performance but of the
performance as filtered through the lens of the camera, and accessed by me
remotely via my laptop. To be fair though, I did turn my lights out, to
simulate the experience of the theatre to a certain extent!
The live webcast captured not only the performances
themselves, but also the entire event, including the introductions, audiences
during the intermission, and the interactive question-answer session after the
performance, and I felt that watching the livecast gave a sense of what it may
have been like to be present in the theatre throughout the evening.
The first piece was Akshongay, a duet danced by Nova Bhattacharya and Louis
Laberge-Côté. The piece began with the two dancers sitting facing each other, wrapped
by a long piece of red fabric. Throughout the piece, I was mesmerized with the
relationship established between the two dancers and this fabric. To me, it
almost felt like the red fabric was its own character, and played quite a
significant role in the piece. At times I saw motifs inspired by images from
Hindu mythology. I also enjoyed the lighting design in this piece, and how the
dancers and the lighting interacted with each other.
Bhattacharya performed a part of this piece in a
black dress, and another part in a sari. She had a charming, inviting smile on
her face through much of the piece. She flicked and adjusted the ends of her
sari playfully. I could feel the sensuality of the piece building as she and
Laberge-Côté clutched each others' arms. Here, the camera took me right into
the intimacy of the moment. I'm sure those moments in the theatre were sublime,
but I was captured by the beauty of what I saw through the camera's eye (via
the webcast!). I think the camera worked beautifully in collaboration with these
artists for that moment.
Perhaps the most touching part of the choreography
for me was a section in which they seem to depict a couple in harmony. Bhattacharya
fixes Laberge-Côté's tie, and he, in turn, bends down and adjusts the lines of
her sari's pleats near the bottom. This reminded me of something that I've seen
my own parents help each other with- and it made me think of my parents' almost
thirty years of marriage and more years of togetherness. I think this is a
moment that South Asian spectators of my generation who may have grown up watching a
sari-wearing mother can relate to. This interdependence was highlighted throughout
the piece - in both its title, Akshongay,
which means "together" in Bengali, and in the contact-based nature of
most of the piece. However, for me, the "Akshongay"ness was crystallized
in that moment of the two dancers grooming each other/adjusting each other's
tie/sari.
The second piece of the evening was The Mystical Forest, by Sadhya Dance
Company from India. This performance marked the world premiere of the piece.
What I remember of this visually arresting work: manipulated fabric, ropes and the
extremely athletic dancers! The piece
began with a group of dancers entering through the aisles of the theatre, moving
through the audience, sometimes making eye-contact with specific audience members.
Here again, the camera showed me not only the dancers but also the reactions of
the audience to these dancers. The dancers eventually climbed onto the stage,
where they proceeded to perform the rest of the piece.
I enjoyed a section
they performed with ropes- it reminded me of games I played in school in my
first school in India. Another visually spectacular moment in the piece was a
section in which long pieces of cloth trailed behind each dancer as they
entered the stage from the wings. These dancers carried masks as they entered,
giving the section an almost ceremonial feel. The dancers moved with incredible agility
throughout the physically challenging parts of the piece, and there were a
number of very athletic and acrobatic moments (such as the killing of an animal
(portrayed by a female dancer) by a hunter (portrayed by one of the male
dancers) which were beautifully timed.
My heartfelt
appreciation to Kalanidhi Fine Arts of Canada, for firstly, their wonderful
programming bringing both traditional and new creative directions in Indian dance to Canadian
audiences over the past two decades, and secondly, for exploring new media in furthering
the reach of these performances.
