Creating your own identity was the crux of legendary dancer Narendra Sharma’s work. He focussed on achieving a distinctive style of dancing, . The dancer, who was Uday Shankar’s prodigal student, went on to establish his mark in the field of modern dance in the country. To commemorate his work and principles, his students and dance academy Bhoomika are hosting the Narendra Sharma Festival of Dance at the Sri Ram Centre for Arts and Culture in New Delhi from February 14 to 17.

Some of the renowned choreographers who will be seen showcasing their works are Tanushree Shankar, Astad Deboo and Bharat Sharma. Apart from them, there are five productions, which were premiered at the festival and have been choreographed for the special occasion.
Bharat Sharma, festival director and choreographer presented his production Nusrat Song, which is based on love and relationship between a man and a woman. “I wanted to do something around Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s songs. They have been such intense love ballads and explored myriad shades of love, which compelled me to explore something around it. I have specifically explored the relationship between a man and a woman rather then get into the abstract complexities of other relationships,” says Bharat.
For someone like him, who has crossed boundaries and explored the world of dance with Narendra Sharma, Bharat says that Narendra looked for distinctive styles and freedom of expression. “Some of his key principles included the idea of freedom; Freedom from technique and bondage. I always felt that his idea of freedom was something like that of a child painting. It was childlike freedom similar to how a child dabbles with paints and applies his own imaginative theory. The depth and the perspective were more like that of a painter. A painter has his own motive and vision and so does a dancer,” says Bharat adding that he also had his own take.
“I believe that the dynamics were different. A painter deals with his paintings by himself. But that’s not the case with dance, and especially group dancers where you have to deal with an individual style. The space, composition and improvisation were the fundamentals that he obviously made us aware of. “And at the end of the day, each one of us who came out had a different style and that was precisely the idea of modern dance,” says Bharat.
He says that the third edition of the festival was to focus more on choreographers since ultimately they are the ones who create dancers. “The range of choreography this year has diversified and it showcases new innovative productions on one stage,” states Bharat.
With an emphasis on choreographers and their unique dance languages, the festival also showcases dancers that have been trained in several styles, national and international, including classical styles. However, choreographers choose not to focus on any particular style while interpreting a theme or abstract idea, but display their respective artistic vocabularies and craft that each one has developed. This represents the diversity of expressions within the field and contains elements of the traditional, the modern, the popular and the artistic. Tripura Kashyap, choreographer and project coordinator is presenting her production Fragments for the first time.
“The dancers re-live, re-imagine and re-arrange pieces of their lives in the kinesis of choreography. Fleeting fragments interrupt one another at random through abstract movement transitions. Improvised and arranged movement structures blend together to reflect vignettes from the lives of women, monks, players, dancers, lovers, a child and street boys. The underlying narrative explores the relation between memory, impulse, contemplation and longing. Rabindranath Tagore’s un-titled poetry has inspired the development of visual and kinetic imagery in the dance pieces. We wanted to develop in an eclectic language,” she elaborates.