Kalanidhi International Dance Festival Day 3: Reflections on the Livecast Evening Performances

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. 

Kalanidhi International Dance Festival 2014- Reflections on Opening Night

Yesterday I attended the opening night of the Kalanidhi International Dance Festival on New Directions in Indian Dance.  I'm always interested in the dialogues between "tradition" and "contemporary" in any genre of dance, and thought I'd share a few reflections on the pieces I watched yesterday. I had reached the Harbourfront Centre a little early after teaching a class downtown, and so I took the opportunity to pick up our pre-ordered tickets (Amber and I were attending together, and had purchased our tickets online) at the box office. Since the evening's performance was scheduled to begin at 7:30 pm and it was only 6:30 pm, I decided to go to the Pearl and have a glass of Merlot. I was able to get a seat near the window, and the view of the lake covered in ice was spectacular.

The festival's opening evening began with a performance of a traditional Bharatanatyam varnam by Nivedha Ramalingham, who put on a lovely performance despite a few glitches in the music recording. I enjoyed her expressivity and her good form, and remain deeply appreciative of her transition back into the choreography after the technical glitches with the music recording.  

This was followed by the second performance - SAVITRI-dancing in the forest of death by Preeti Vasudevan's Thresh from New York City. SAVITRI began with a very striking visual of Vasudevan's legs in the air. The lighting highlighted this beautifully by leaving the rest of her body (which was on the floor) in darkness. My attention was caught by the articulations of her feet in the air, and I got goosebumps when she used vocalizations as she lowered her feet to the ground. There is something powerful about the use of human voice without words, and Vasudevan captured that powerful, indescribable feeling perfectly.  The set consisted of ropes suspended from the ceiling at upstage right- was this reflective of the forest? From my seat in the balcony, they almost looked like suspended human bones, adding to the somewhat eerie quality of parts of the piece.  At times, Vasudevan went behind these ropes, sometimes she emerged from between them.  I was definitely drawn into the piece. At moments, it appeared as though the sections were a little disjoint, especially when the sections involving voice were interspersed with sections which seemed to evoke movements from the Bharatanatyam lexicon −  but this made sense upon reading the programme later- the sections presented yesterday were excerpts from a longer work.

SAVITRI and its performer-mise-en-scene conversation was perhaps a perfect transition into the third part of the evening − three short dance pieces presented by Hari Krishnan's InDance.  The first, titled Box, featured two dancers dancing phrases of movements from the  Bharatanatyam vocabulary  in two separate squares of light. As I read the programme notes now, it appears that the choreographic vision was inspired by the concept of binaries, such as "White/Other", "Marginal/Mainstream," and how they are boxed into clean  categorizes . While watching it, I actually didn't find myself thinking of binaries; I was instead drawn in by the visual of the boxed pools of light on the floor, and how the dancers danced within the walls of these. I also enjoyed the unison of the dancers,  and the textures of percussion created by the different instruments played by Morgan Doctor. The most exciting moment for me was the ending, which featured the two dancers leaping into each other's boxes.

The next was a solo piece, an excerpt from Mea Culpa, which, as the programme notes state, was inspired by a vintage magazine cover featuring Ted Shawn's 1926 dance The Cosmic Dance of Siva. Featuring Matt Owen as the delightful interpreter, it was easily the most entertaining piece of the evening. The piece began with Owen stripping slowly and sensually into fishnets, and then proceeding to perform exaggerated movements reminiscent of the early 20th century "oriental dances".  Owen danced in front of a large projected image reminiscent of the Nataraja (not quite Nataraja, but an Orientalist approximation of it!) Hari Krishnan's programme notes, crediting Rossini and Gowri Shankar for the music and offering apologies to both, were also deliciously amusing. I relished this piece, in both its  humorous dialogue with the historical Ted Shawn work and its own package of fun.

The final piece of the evening was Uma, danced by Mesma Belsare. I particularly enjoyed watching her enter in character onto the stage, with her diva-like pause in the centre while waiting for the curtain to go up, and her varied gaits throughout the piece.  

This is the second Kalanidhi Festival that I've actually been able to watch since moving to Toronto in 2006. I've always been either away from Toronto or occupied during the festival days during the other years. I did, however, get a chance to attend the festival and symposium in 2009, where I saw the choreographic works which eventually inspired the writing of the article which  turned into my chapter contribution in the book Geographies of Dance, ed: Adam Pine, Olaf Kuhlke, Lexington Publishers (2013) (http://www.amazon.ca/Geographies-Dance-Movement-Corporeal-Negotiations/dp/0739171844)

Reflections on the Dance Film Intensive with Kaeja d'Dance

Today I attended the one-day dance film-making intensive offered by Allen and Karen Kaeja. I had first seen Allen's dance film works at York University in 2008, during one of the courses which I had TA'd for during my M.A  in Dance. I'd always been interested in film as a visual medium, and the use of the body in film in particular, and I was fascinated by this genre of film (or dance? or meeting point for the two disciplines). During that class, we had watched sections of Kaeja's Asylum of Spoons (2005), and Old Country (2004).  I was interested in further investigating and exploring this medium. In the years in between, I did try making a dance film, shot on the rocks along the Atlantic Ocean at Port Medway Village in Nova Scotia. While the scenery was breathtakingly beautiful, I wasn't quite happy with how the dancing interacted with the camera, and decided I wanted to further engage with this concept and learn more before I attempted my next one.

One of my goals in going in for this workshop was to garner ideas and knowhow on how to direct a shot, and how to envision a shot, and also to see examples of shots specific to this genre to get a sense of the possibilities in which they may be directed. I also deal with the limitations of not having expensive editing software- I use a very basic Windows Movie Maker for most of my video/dance projects, and hence much of my "eye" through which I hope to reveal my vision lies in the camera itself. In this aspect, I found the workshop very satisfying. Allen and Karen led us through a fascinating initial exercise of walking around a shared space with dancers, and getting used to "seeing" movement and its possibilities through the eye of the camera.

I particularly enjoyed the group exercises we did in making short dance films, and through these group exercises, also meeting the fellow participants of the workshop. One of my greatest joys at dance events is meeting new dance artists and new creative people. I was delighted to be attending with Amrapali 'Amber' Ray from Ekakshara Dance Creations. In addition to being an engineer and a dance artist, Amber is a talented visual artist, who works primarily with canvas. For the group project, Amber and I partnered up with two talented dancers, and made a one-minute continuous shot. We did several takes of this. One of my favourite parts of this project was also the collaborative aspect of it- the collaborative vision and work towards it. Watching and discussing the shots taken by the different groups afterwards was also fun and I found the feedback very informative and useful.

In the light of the workshop I took today, I think I am in a more informed position with regards to how to envision and direct a shot. The workshop did indeed address some of the significant aspects which I was curious about, and also opened up a world of possibilities in terms of what the camera-eye can do in interacting with dance. What I perhaps found the most valuable was Allen's emphasis on the camera as a living, active entity.

In retrospect, I'm also glad that I  attempted  my little project on the Atlantic. While there are many aspects I would change today in terms of framing and angles, the exercise was greatly useful in identifying the nature of my questions and entrypoints. I will probably load an edited version of the footage we took today soon. I'm happy to have taken the workshop.

Life since the PhD

So I'm settling in to a new routine during my first month after the submission of the PhD dissertation. So much has been happening! 

Firstly, a huge congratulations to wonderful friend Iana Komarnytska for winning the Star Bellydancer Canada soloist award. Knowing Iana for over a year now, I know that she is wonderfully versatile and an extremely dedicated dancer, and truly deserving. I was not personally able to attend this competition, which was held at Toronto's Mod Club, but from what I gather from the beautiful photographs of the whole event, I find that all the performances that evening were wonderful, and I'm proud and honoured to share such a wonderful dancing space in this city with so many talented and passionate artists.

It has been a generally busy time for me, and a time full of transitions, both exciting and filled with anxiety about what the future holds. In general, I've been engaged in a housing search, for a new apartment, since I'll be moving out of the York campus soon. I have also been pursuing a Dance Education Internship at George Brown College Dance Department/Ballet Jörgen, while continuing my usual work as a dance teacher, soloist and performer with a few different troupes. 

March will be a busy month for dancing and dance-related activities! Here's what I have going on in March:

March 1: Dance Film workshop with Alan Kaeja: Amber from Ekakshara Dance Creations and I are taking this workshop together. This is probably the first time in the last few years that I've actually been free on the date of the workshop, and look forward to this one! I find Dance Film/Dance on Camera an exciting medium which combines both of my interests.

March 9: Performance with Dilan Dance Company: One of the exciting new dance languages that I've been introduced to since the PhD has been Turkish and Kurdish traditional dances, and choreographies by Fethi Karakecili. I had first met Fethi on the first day of attending York for the Master's degree in the Dance Department. Since then, we've remained good friends, classmates, and now also creative collaborators. I'm honoured to be part of his company and learn these beautiful and rich dance traditions from him. I had first danced as part of Dilan Dance Company in October 2011, at the world premiere of Kurdish epic love story "Mem u Zin." The performance was staged at Toronto's Isabel Bader Theatre. I had returned to Toronto from a summer of being away from the city and one day got a phone call from Fethi asking if I could join the performance. Ofcourse I said yes! It was an enriching experience, and I was deeply honoured to be part of this historic and memorable event. Joe Fiorito from the Toronto Star wrote about this performance and its significance in his article:

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2011/09/28/fiorito_kurdish_love_story_set_for_toronto_stage.html

In May 2014, Dilan Dance Company returns to Toronto's Isabel Bader Theatre with another large-cast production titled "Dance of Colours." It has been great fun to work with the company again, and to work with the fabulous and fun set of dancers in the production. Through the work with Dilan and Fethi, I also learned a very fun and festive Turkish dance from the Silifke region in which the dancers play wooden spoons as they dance. The summer workshops I had with Chelydra in Newport News in Zilling have come in handy here! I had first seen Fethi perform this dance at the York Dance Department's grad showcase in 2007, and at a performance in February, I joined him in a duet performance of this dance. It has been truly enjoyable to work with him and his dancers. On March 9, we perform again at an event, as an ensemble. 

March 16: This is the second workshop that the Ekakshara dancers and I are taking together in March- and greatly looking forward to it! We're taking it at Bellyup Studios in Oakville, and this will be my first time visiting this wonderful studio which I have heard wonderful things about. Needless to say, we're excited!

March 18: Guest Lecture in Music Department's world music class. Last year, I had done one of these in the world music traditions class. I lectured on the traditions of classical Indian Odissi dance, and on the traditions of the gotipua and mahari and the sabdaswarapata traditions which inform modern day Odissi dance and its aesthetics. In addition, I also spoke a little about Khalbeliya dance performed by the women of the khalbeliya tribe in Rajasthan in western India. Finally, I speak about Bollywood and its history of dance involvement, and the influences of world dance and music traditions today on the music/dance in Bollywood cinema. I am doing this lecture again on this date.

March 29: The girls at Ekakshara and I are performing together at another private event.

2014 Beginnings: Dance, Writing, and Conferences

I hope everyone has had a wonderful holiday break. It's already over two weeks into 2014, so I figured it was time for an update! Here's what I have coming up:

1) "Body Brake" at Theatre Passe-Muraille! (January 24th, 10:30 pm, Theatre Passe-Muraille)

 This is an exciting and fun new dance series in an intimate and informal setting, for Theatre Passe-Muraille After Hours programming, and is curated by the wonderful Brandy Leary of Anandam Dance Theatre. January 24th is the innaugural evening of this, and I am excited to be performing there. The lineup features many incredible Toronto-based dancers from diverse dance genres, and I'm dancing a duet with Amber of Ekakshara Dance Creations. I look forward! More information about this event can be found here, and we would love if you could join us in this celebration of diverse dance forms:
https://www.facebook.com/events/522318684533675

2) Between the end of December and middle of January, I have two dance-related publications:

Firstly, the book "Geographies of Dance Vol. I: Corporeal Negotiations" featuring my article "Modernity, Post-Modernity and the Paradigmatic Mudra: Corporeal Negotiations in the Works of Toronto's Bharatanatyam Choreographers" as the first chapter was released in late December 2013. Here is more information about the book:

http://www.amazon.ca/Geographies-Dance-Movement-Corporeal-Negotiations/dp/0739171844

Also, I've been working on my first bellydance-related article (based on Egyptian Golden Age cinema bellydancers and the courtesans of Bollywood films), for the Zaghareet Magazine, and its scheduled to appear in the upcoming issue of the magazine.

3)  The new year also brings a flurry of dance activity. Amber and I are performing our first 2014 Ekakshara Dance Creations gig on this Sunday, January 19th, and then "Body Brake" on January 24th, followed by a performance with The Saucy Tarts on January 25th in Kitchener. Ekakshara then performs again on February 1st and the 15th.

4) Conferences: I've been working on a new dance ethnography and research project recently, and will be presenting this in an upcoming Toronto conference. I continue to work on the research towards this project, and will post more information on this conference soon!

5) Finally, I am excited to return to teaching this year. I've been on a brief hiatus from teaching dance, in order to work on the PhD dissertation and the Fringe production last year. I will be teaching my regular students as well as some new ones this year, and I look forward!

Alongside all this, I am still completing a few revisions to my dissertation post-defense, and look towards turning it in for the final submission soon. I guess those are all my updates for now! 

Reflecting back on 2013..

On the eve of the new year, I'm sitting back and reflecting on my 2013, and I realize that its been a rather nice year. These are a few of my memorable times/ moments this year:

1) Spending time, performing and rehearsing with my dance sisters from Ekakshara Dance Creations- there were so much of this that I find it difficult to think of one particular episode. We've done so many classes, performances, and workshops. However, I think for me personally, the most memorable one was our performance at Caledon, ON  in January 2013. It was the first time that all of us were able to be in one location together. I have delightful memories  with these awesome ladies, and it truly feels like a family.

My dance community in Toronto infact often feels like my family away from home, and on this note, I must mention Fethi Karakecili, Iana Komarnytska, and Ariane of Obskurah- I've shared much dancing joy and adventures, as well as fond memories with each of them.

2) My solo show ("Corpus Matris") at Toronto Fringe Festival (July 2013): This was definitely one of the highlights of my year, and I will probably dedicate an entire post to this experience sometime soon. I have  found the Toronto Fringe to be highly supportive of all its artists. This was a great adventure, and I had a great  team with me throughout the Fringe run (Stage Manager Nicole MacKinnon, Assistant Stage Manager Renee-Claude Gratton, and Lighting Designer Parker Nowlan, and the wonderful technicians at Theatre Passe-Muraille Mainspace).

3) Defending my doctoral dissertation (December 2013): The dissertation has been the culmination of the last few years of my research on history of the stylistic lineage of late Guru Debaprasad Das. Defending this dissertation and reaching towards the final completion of this made the whole journey feel like it has come full circle.  I'm still working on the last few revisions towards the dissertation, which I hope to complete within the next few weeks.

4) Seeing much of my family over summer (August 2013): I do not get to see my family from India often and I was happy to see so many of them in one place this summer- I saw my maternal grandmother, my cousins on my mom's side, uncle (my dad's brother) and cousin, whom I hadn't seen since my trip to Odisha on the Shastri scholarship.

5) Finally, this post would not be complete if I didn't mention the wonderful roadtrip to Bluefield, WV with my significant other. Or for that matter, the many hours spent in watching movies, tv episodes and the entire run of Battlestar Galactica, attending weddings,  cooking delicious meals throughout the whole of this year. I used the term "significant other," but "boyfriend" would be equally applicable here. I have a wonderful and extremely supportive boyfriend  and I feel incredibly lucky for this. The times spent with him and his family have been truly memorable and have been greatly responsible for making this year as wonderful as it has been.

On the whole, I think this year has been a good year. It has been active, artistically and academically stimulating, and I've met wonderful new people, learned exciting new dance languages, and I end the year with a good feeling. I wish everyone a safe, joyous and successful 2014.

December thus far..

Just a little update on my December 2013 so far:

1) PhD Defense!: I successfully defended my PhD Dissertation, titled "The Debaprasad Das Lineage: Reconsidering the Narrative of Classical Indian Odissi Dance History" on December 13th, in the Dance Department at York University. Yes, on Friday the 13th! The defense was scheduled for 9:30 am on a Friday morning, and we received heavy snow that morning.  I have to admit, I was nervous and jittery for it, and hadn't slept the night before. As I walked into the room for the defense that morning, I realized that it was the same room as I had had my first class ever in Dance Ethnography back in 2006. It was a good feeling.

The defense went well, and the 2.5 hours didn't feel that long at all. This was the first doctoral defense in Dance in the department, the university, and also, I believe, in Canada. It was wonderful to be finished, and we had a lovely lunch at the department afterwards.

2) Reh'ma Intercultural Diversity Festival:  I performed at this event, held at the Noor Cultural Centre, exactly a week prior to my defense. I was happy to get away and dance for a bit, and truly enjoyed performing for this wonderful event and also watching the other performances here. I performed my Khalbeliya solo, as well as two pieces choreographed by Zingari Alejandra Garcia, whose unique choreographies engaged in dialoguing various genres with flamenco I hope to write about sometime soon.