A motley group comprising a beat boxer, five composers, a soprano and eight dancers from around the globe are coming to town in the form of the Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company to challenge the very notion of dance tonight
A motley group comprising a beat boxer, five composers, a soprano and eight dancers from around the globe are coming to town in the form of the Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company to challenge the very notion of dance tonight
Dancer Shobana Jeyasingh does not believe in traditional stage performances. The bizarre the setting, the better it is for this twenty two year old dance company started by Jeyasingh in London in 1988.
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From restaurant kitchen pantries to heritage buildings with some fountains for company, Jeyasingh's dance troupe likes to take creative leaps literally while performing in a fusion of styles ranging from ballet to Bharatanatyam.
Redefining dance in a contemporary setting but within the framework of traditional Bharatanatyam as well, Jeyasingh, the artistic director of the Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company is in town courtesy the British Council and The Arts Council England with a double bill dance production titled Bruise Blood and Faultline.
We got talking to Jeyasingh about her show, the artistic collaborators on the production and why her dance is not confined within four walls.
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What's the inspiration behind Bruise Blood and Faultline?
Bruise Blood and Faultline were inspired by three things: a piece of electronic music composed by Robin Rimbaud or Scanner, a UK based conceptual artist, writer and composer. The piece, an electro acoustic one with a soprano voice inspired me a lot. This was coupled with Gautam Malkhani's novel Londonstani about disaffected Asian youth in Britain. Also, this was 2006, the summer after the London bombings when the newspapers were full of stories about Asian youth being under suspicion. The interpretation in this dance is not literal though. It's more about the kind of anxiety that the youth faced during that time.u00a0u00a0
Your show looks at the disaffected Asian youth in Britain and also uses the classic composition Come Out by Steve Reich, about uprooted black youth in the 60s? What is the parallel that you have drawn? How would you connect it to the Indian audiences?
In a way, this was a bit of a coincidence really. Faultline was made in 2006, Bruise Blood, last year. I have always been attracted to a bit of tension and like to create it through my dance. About Indians being able to identify with the show, I think whether you live in India or Britain, the challenges for today's city youth anywhere is pretty much similar. They all carry the burden of their past identities.The barriers across culture in this case is not rigid. My show is also about Indians, who live out of the context of India. India today is a global brand with the call centre industry being a vast network of conversations all over the world and Indian writing in English, finding our voice here shouldn't be difficult.
Tell us about the collaborators in the show and how they fit into this show?
In Bruise Blood and Faultline, you will get to see dancers from across the globe. Dancers from Spain, Britain, Vietnam, Finland, Italy, China and Bangalore will be performing. British beatboxer Shlomo, Belgian beat boxer Roxorloops and a Goan British Soprano singer Patricia Rozario will be lending their voices to the show. Scanner, Steve Reich, Erolyn Wallen and Glyn Perrin are the composers who have worked on the score. Plus there's artist and filmmaker Pete Gome's stark monochromatic images as a background.
Why did you think of using a beatboxer?
This production was commissioned by the South Bank Centre, an arts centre in London. I met Shlomo, who is an artist in residence there, we got talking and realised that we had musical interests in common. We both love Steve Reich and his classic Come Out. Basically the composition is like a loop with just one human voice. This stark piece would be perfect for Shlomo to perform as a beatboxing piece. There is no melody involved in the track, we just needed to interpret the elements. So it was like one man's voice to another.
How has dance as a form of practicing art changed for you over time?
The toughest thing perhaps has been being an Indian with an Indian name. When you are an Indian dancer trained in Bharatnatyam, the West tends to assume that the only thing you should be doing is classical dance. It was tough to be Indian and at the same time be contemporary in my dance. It was either one or the other.
It's much easier now. Communications through technology, and the digital medium has broken down such barriers and changed everything radically. Where we are sitting as a dance company today, we want to communicate contemporary Indian-ness, at the same time we don't want to be without any history either. We just don't want to be a carbon copy of a New York or a London.
You have chosen unusual locations consistently for your performances. What's the story behind that?
Choreography is wherever it happens. It is about moving bodies, so a shift in context is more novel and far more challenging. Last summer, we performed a piece called Counterpoint at Somerset House in London where 20 dancers danced in synchronisation with 55 fountains. I choreographed the fountains too. Public spaces for dance performances are ideal because it's free, and more people have access to it and there is that element of surprise when they suddenly walk into a performance.u00a0
At: Chowdiah Memorial Hall, Malleshwaram
On: tonight, November 8, 7.30 pm
Call: 2248 9220 for passes
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