Dayita Nereyeth and Poorna Swami from Bengaluru through their contemporary dance ‘Citations: Three Dances’ navigate the quirky and the overlooked, the exuberant and the meditative. Each of the three unique pieces reveals different surfaces and edges of bodies creating structures when nobody is watching, or when everybody is. NT BUZZ gets curious about their upcoming performances in Goa
Danuska Da Gama I NT BUZZ
‘Citations: Three Dances’, a dance performance by Dayita Nereyeth and Poorna Swami will be held at The Village Studio, Parra on Thursday, March 15 at 7.30 p.m. and at Gallery Gitanjali on Friday, March 16 at 6 p.m.
Dayita Nereyeth is a dancer and editor. She has danced professionally with the Yana Lewis Dance Company and Les Ballets Nomades et Sonores. Talking to NT BUZZ about ‘Citations: Three Dances’ that has two solo performances and one duet, Dayita tells us that the idea of the show came about as the two performers have been friends since their schooling days, and studying in the same college, wanted to work together.
Poorna Swami is a dancer, choreographer, and writer. She has performed her choreography in and around New York City. Swami has served as India Editor-at-large of the international online literary journal, Asymptote and her writing has featured in publications such as The Caravan, Open Magazine, The Wire, The Hindu BLink, Words Without Borders, Indiana Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Prelude.
About contemporary dance, Poorna tells us that it is dance that is made of the contemporary… of the now. “Things we are concerned with, conversation we are engaging in, aesthetics being exchanged everyday; I think there’s something immediate about contemporary dance,” she says.
Exploring a range of themes – from the daily wait on a local commute, to a love letter and a city constructing itself, the contemporary dance expressed through body movement navigates the seen and the overlooked, the exuberant and the meditative.
Talking about contemporary dance and other forms Poorna doesn’t agree with the notion that it is better than mainstream, or commercial work. She says: “People still continue to make commercial dance work and it’s very interesting too. I certainly don’t feel that contemporary dance form is better, but what I do feel is that contemporary as a word has to do with time… the time we are living in and as a form it is responsive through the world around us and that is what makes it draw our attention to and is interesting. It’s not talking of the past and dealing with aspects of our present.”
“We happened to go to the same Mount Holyoke College in New York to study dance and came back to Bengaluru and wanted to work together. We decided we would make a duet,” Dayita says before adding that though they had come back to the same place they lived in, a lot had changed. Dayita has worked in all aspects of stagecraft at the American Dance Festival and Dixon Place (NYC).
The first piece, Cartography has choreography, performance, and text by Poorna and original sound composition by Marcel Zaes. It is a solo performance and is an offering of a poem through movement. Here she will speak and move at the same time during the entire length of the piece. It is a movement-ode, an intimate implosion between word and body. The second is a series of love letters based on original poems; it emerges from the formal romance of Bharatanatyam that collides with more idiosyncratic lexicons to become a disputed map of lust and lament. Cartography premiered at the 2016 La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival in New York City.
The second piece, Pants Becoming Kites, choreographed by Ellen Oliver in collaboration with Dayita, and the original sound composition by Dylan Eldredge Fitzwater is also a solo. It finds inspiration in the mundane daily transit or commute to work. It was originally conceived as a duet for a student production at Amherst College (USA) in 2014. Ellen has collaborated with Dayita to rework the duet into a quirky and comical solo, exploring the dynamics of waiting and performing. It highlights pedestrian qualities in our daily moments of transit and how we can be inspired by the ordinary. Dayita tells us that it was their time in NYC from waiting for a bus, the journey in it, observing fellow commuters that got them to work on this concept.
The dance Long Time No See choreographed by Dayita and Poorna on an original sound composition by Dara Hankins. This has emerged from a game of puzzles and blocks, flesh and skyline—a continual return to the precise wilderness of form and structure. The duet performances by both dancers, was inspired by the idea of a city. “Our movements are all based on this concept. The music has been composed keeping these aspects in mind and has a cello, piano and other instruments and reflects a city with sounds depicting chaos, harmony,” Dayita says.
The inspiration for the dances has come from the place they’ve lived in for most part of their lives – Bengaluru and New York. Their interest in the idea of cities and how cities treat the inhabitants like brutality, magnetism and relationships are explored deeply in the performance.
A trained Bharatnatyam dancer, who still practices traditional dance regularly, Poorna says that it has helped her in her contemporary dance as it gives structure and rigour to perform as it is a basic way of understanding the body, whereas in contemporary dance you can choreograph new ways to use your body.
“Classical dance definitely instils discipline and allows you to understand and perform details and it has a long history; and contemporary is not an isolated form, it came out of classical – so it’s like expanding your own history through dance,” she explains.
After having performances in Bengaluru, and Goa they will take ‘Citations: Three Dances’ to other cities. Dayita who has also performed ballet in Goa tells us that they have no preconceived notions when they come to perform contemporary dance in Goa, and are hoping that audience will enjoy the performances.
The two are very excited about their Goa performances, especially Poorna for whom this is the debut visit. “There’s not much of an art scene in Goa, though I know of several festivals happening here I have always wanted to perform,” says Poorna excitedly for the venues for performances aren’t theatres, which will give a different character and feel.
(‘Citations: Three Dances’, a dance performance by Dayita Nereyeth and Poorna Swami will be held at The Village Studio, Parra on Thursday, March 15 at 7.30 p.m. and at Gallery Gitanjali on Friday, March 16 at 6 p.m. For tickets and details contact: 9845056141 (The Village Studio) & 8806598832 (Gallery Gitanjali))