Continuity in any sphere of life is quite a mundane and moments of imbalance simply rupture the free flow of emotion. Exploring this aspect of communication in life and relationships with oneself and others, is Sudarshan Chakravorty, with his latest Indo-Swiss production, Parivahitam. Using contemporary technique, Parivahitam delves into the dynamic minds and talks about the disturbing situation of the present, which seeks relief from the events in the past. The production was premiered in New York as a part of the Global Dance Meet in July this year. The Indian leg of their tour will commence on December 9 in Kolkata, travelling across nine cities in the country.
“It is about the journey of an individual in life, who deals with the reality of his present and encounters various situations in life. The links and threads by which an individual relates to another face sudden rupture and the structure begins to collapse,” explains Sudarshan, who has directed the production. It is also about studying the concrete and beautiful structure of life. The contemporary dance production takes inspiration from the dance vocabulary of Bharatnatyam and incorporates some elements of the classical repertoire. In other words, the metaphors come from Bharatnatyam. “We are losing control over our minds and bodies and there comes a stage where we don’t know the way ahead. And at that point of time, we begin to explore ourselves, our minds and our bodies,” says Sudarshan. According to him, we finally find peace in moving on in life. He adds, “Eventually we come to terms with the present and one of the ways to go ahead is by accepting and acknowledging the situation.
Sudarshan has been trained in Bharatnatyam and Kathakali. He has also learnt jazz from France-based Nana Gleason, acquired skills in modern dance from Christopher Lechner in Germany and contemporary dance from Michel Casanovas in Switzerland. At the age of 19, he founded his dance institute Sapphire and has been constantly evolving as a contemporary dancer with various dance productions on interesting themes.
The emergence of contemporary dance in India is now an established phenomenon and the number of classical dancers taking to it is also on the rise. “After having learnt classical dance forms, there is a desire to realise a language of your own. One gets conditioned to the traditional movements without consciously realising it. And then there comes a stage where you want your body to go beyond those movements, beyond those set rules and traditions, which is why we take to contemporary forms,” says Sudarshan.
Contemporary dance is a constant process where dance movements keep evolving. “What we perform now will certainly not be the same three years later,” he adds. The juxtaposition of time and space in contemporary dance matters the most. Sudarshan says that he was inspired to take to the contemporary because he didn’t want to follow the copy-paste technique. “While creating my own production I realised that I couldn’t simply put movements from various dance forms together and create something new. That is not the way I wanted to function,” says Sudarshan.
The current generation of dancers are pushing traditional boundaries and Sudarshan accepts that western vocabulary exercises strong influence on Indian contemporary forms. The training methodology in the west is very different and it is interesting to imbibe some of the things they do, especially their approach towards dance,” says Sudarshan. He says that dancers are negating the traditional and breaking barriers in the recent years.
A dance language takes time to build and construct. There are certain emotions that go into creating that language. “We in India are still in the transition phase and are evolving in contemporary form as opposed to our western counterparts. Classical dance has been ingrained in our system for years now. The idea of breaking away from the conventional has been there for years while it is catching up in India. And by default we are going to have elements of classical dances coming in because that is what we are taught as the foundation,” says Sudarshan.
The idea as he says, is to create kinetic contemporary dance that crystalises the meaning of your philosophy in life and is comprehensive at the same time. The need today is to have more contemporary productions and performances.
“There needs to more visibility and more number of performances. If it is visible to the audiences, then the idea might seep into the culture, which is the same for classical dance,” says Sudarshan. He says that aesthetics keep changing and evolving. It is up to the choreographer to maintain the image of contemporary dance. He is optimistic as he concludes, “The legacy is evolving and the practitioners of contemporary dance will take it forward in an organic and radical way.”