5olo is an ensemble of five Contemporary performances that have come together to question, unravel and trigger discussions on home, body and power
Venuri Perera
Five contemporary dancers in the city are stretching right now in anticipation of a Mumbai audience that is buzzing with curiosity. Their performances cover a gamut of questions such as ‘Where is home?’ ‘How does marketing control me?’ and ‘How does my body communicate?’ Venuri Perera, Mirra, Rachnika Goyal, Avantika Bahl and Riya Mandal come together as a bouquet of solo performers that complement each other, titled 5OLO.
Venuri Perera, a Sri Lankan dancer, will look at the concept of a traitor through her piece, Traitriot
The five found and formulated their pieces at the Delhi-based, GATI Dance Forum as part of its summer residency programme. Amidst 10 weeks, each came from different points in their lives to address concerns under the guidance of reputed Indian and international dancers like Padmini Chettur, Kirsty Alexander, Sankar Venketswaran, and Zuleikha Allana. Throughout the 2.5-month period, the dancers supported and brainstormed with each other. “The same energy runs in each piece that makes it unique and compliments each other at the same time,” explains Mirra. We invited each to decipher their acts.
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Mirra’s dance performance explores the concept of control and media
110048, M81 by Avantika Bahl: Mumbai-based Bahl who originally belongs to Delhi and has trained in London wanted to understand the meaning of home through her piece. She shares, “Having lived in Delhi for a large chunk of my life, my notion of home was unidirectional. It was only when I moved to another country did these boundaries start to dissolve. I was preoccupied with questions of how do we root ourselves within the private cosmos we create.”
Looking Within Without is about meditation and ‘here and now’ as devised by dancer Rachnika Goyal
According to official sources... by Mirra: Bangalore-based dancer, Mirra was looking for more after her six-year hiatus, “GATI was the right platform to come back and find my language. The residency program encouraged me to drown myself in my creative zone,” admits the 35-year-old whose piece is a satire on the functions that marketing and publicity fulfills by controlling people’s minds.
Avantika Bahl
Tratriot by Venuri Perera: This Sri Lankan dancer joined GATI to encourage her growth as a dancer as also she wanted to understand betrayal. Perera explains how it is a supportive environment unlike what is prevalent back home. “There the Contemporary dance scene is nascent; the community consists of a handful of people while the process of creation is extremely isolating. The opportunity to share the process with others on a similar journey attracted me to the residency,” shares the 33-year-old who was keen to explore the notion of a traitor. She elaborates, “It’s many definitions and layers from the personal to the political, the motivations behind labelling, the relationship between betrayal, non-conformity and disobedience.
I examined aspects of power and manipulation, and how that can affect the body and movement.” Looking within without by Rachnika Goyal: Goyal internalised the body’s relation with the mind in her piece. The 28-year-old’s process to find her piece, is intriguing as she blindfolded herself “to convey looking within and searching for peace,” in her own words.
Unfold@70BPM by Riya Mandal: 24-year-old Mandal who has studied psychology perceives the understanding of the body as a medium of communication through her piece. Her act is triggered by body language and how, in today’s times, it is becoming robotised.
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