Three men mop the stage after a performance that involves drawing with copious amounts of chalk powder. Two use a dry mop, distributing the powder over previously clean sections of the stage. The third man arrives with a wet rag, coaxing it along the length of the stage in practised arcs. The stage is clean again. Some members of the audience applaud; others look bewildered. Was this indeed a performance? Spoiler alert – it wasn’t – but the adventurous uncertainty it provokes underlines all the five dance performances touring as part of The Park’s New Festival 2017.
The festival – which arrives in Mumbai on its fourth stop – has been organised by the Chennai-based Prakriti Foundation. The institution also runs the biennial Prakriti Excellence in Contemporary Dance Awards (PECDA), inviting young choreographers from India to compete for a production grant and growth opportunities. The winner and top four finalists from PECDA 2016 were invited back to the festival this year to showcase their work.
A cyclical nature
Three of the five performances have been created by choreographers from Bengaluru. Abhilash Ningappa’s Architect of Self-Destruction is danced by eight artistes with varied backgrounds in contemporary dance. Clad mostly in solid tones of blue, black and white, the eight initially move as one organism, their bodies vibrating with the impetus that causes them to break out from the group, create a movement, and then walk away. The cycle of dissipating, creating, and then separating continues: the dancers effectively ‘destroy’ what they create as they survey the empty, silent spaces they have left behind.
Parth Bharadwaj’s Urban Chaos opens to the soundtrack of people recalling a crime scene. Situations and relationships gradually populate the score, adding up to a motive for the untoward incident. Periodically, strains of a Bollywood tune waft into the score. Against this aural backdrop, an anonymous man in a helmet prowls the stage, his hips jutting forward in an exaggerated swagger. When he turns his back to the audience, we see the knife jutting out of his neck. The three other dancers on stage are in cotton vests, wearing the air of men who are constantly defeated by their circumstances. As they slouch in various stages of despondency, the man in the helmet sidles up to them, flaunting a selfie stick as he takes photographs. The anonymous man is threatening, yet comical. Bharadwaj’s work echoes PECDA 2012 winner Deepak Kurki Shivaswamy’s NH7 in its examination of human vulnerability in fast-paced urban environments.
Sentient sentiments
It’s human vulnerability that connects many of the showcased works. In Diya Naidu’s Hands and Face Project, she records herself conducting a social experiment in public spaces. She proposes an activity to the acquaintances and strangers she meets – while maintaining eye contact, they are free to touch each other’s faces, and hands. For Naidu, eye contact comes easily, along with the “fraudulent smile” that she attributes to her long innings as a performer. But it is in the faces of the people she locks eyes with that we read the enormity of making simple connections. They fidget, smile and giggle uncomfortably, look away, tear up, and dart sheepish glances at the camera. The anxieties of caste and class, of how they render touch (desirable or unacceptable), are in full bloom as Naidu narrates anecdotes of fear and want. She draws admirably straight lines with chalk powder, barely pausing to look at her handiwork. In the often-frenzied movement that accompanies the drawing, talking and the screening of the footage, she attempts to transgress these lines and blur them.
Based in Nagaland, with training from Mumbai, Kolkata and Bengaluru, Virieno Christina Zakiesato, finds inspiration in four of the five Fs – fight, flight, freeze, and friend – instinctive defences or reactions in survival-oriented situations. In her piece, F4, she focuses on the effects of these reactions, monitoring her breath and heart rate as they gradually return to normal after a manic spell of running. Soon Zakiesato is a white speck on a wall where a video projection of her chest rising and falling with every breath looms large. Gradually, the space is consumed by the dense soundscape of magnified inhales and exhales and the relentless, drum-like sound of a heartbeat.
Love bytes
Folktale is the final performance in the showcase, choreographed by PECDA 2016-winner Surjit Nongmeikapam. As an Imphal-based artist, Nongmeikapam is implicitly expected to make work that reflects Manipur’s fraught socio-political situation. Although, some of his past works have channelled the experience of living and working in state. But with Folktale, he is categorical about making a work that is “non-political” and “non-social”. It is a “love story”, played out between its performers and a basket of lemons. Even as one performer sits by the basket, peeling and contentedly sucking on a lemon, the others tell abstract, evocative stories about this experience. They form a chain, their arms and torsos gently undulating to a cello refrain. Later, they explode into a carnival of arms and legs as they separate themselves from a pile of bodies. Their taste buds inured to the acidity, they chew on the lemons with relish, letting the juice drip down the chins. They are in love, and the lemons taste sweet. There is something compelling about watching Nongmeikapam’s performers grow as an ensemble over a few years of working with him.
By presenting choreographers with varying degrees of experience and access to resources, the festival offers a telling narrative of the support structures for dance in India. In the year since PECDA 2016, some of the works have not evinced the exciting shifts and developments expected of them. What has changed, or remained stagnant? When does a choreographer know that a work is ‘ready’? What combination of vision, dramaturgy, space and production support does a strong work need? What is the fine balance between ‘finding’ support and ‘expecting’ it? As artists, writers, audiences, curators and funders, what role do we play in an evolving dance ecology? These are some of the crucial questions that the festival raises.
The Park’s New Festival: Five Contemporary Dance Performances will take place at Sitara Studio on September 12 at 7 p.m. Entry is Free. Passes at the venue.