“Dance is liberating,” remarks Jayachandran Palazhy, Founder and Artistic Director of the Attakalari Centre for Movement Arts. “It draws sustenance from our past to live in the present, almost touching the future,” he suggests evocatively.

While expounding on the significance of movement as a multidimensional practice, the choreographer explains how a dancer engages with other artistes, audiences and sonic and physical worlds to simultaneously inhabit several micro- and macro-level spaces, exploring a gamut of creative possibilities. Underlying this year’s edition of Spectrum are such ever-expanding faculties of imagination tying the dance styles of four exemplary artistes in a synchronous blend of expression.

Palazhy’s presentation will include Jeeva Pravaha (Flow of Life) incorporating stunning visuals by the Japanese artist Kunihiko Matsuo and powerful music from the composer duo, M. D. Pallavi and Bindhu Malini. The performance will take off from traditional movements to explore an evolving language that “reflects the contemporary idiom.” Palazhy explains that the production talks about “the idea of city as a city of people rather than as a city of architecture or infrastructure” and derives inspiration from the plight of migrant labourers who left them in hordes while grappling with the economic horrors induced by the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Where Palazhy draws from collective memory to reach for a futuristic dialogue in his conceptualisation of a city, Odissi exponent Shubhada Varadkar presents a slice of the past by diving into Indian musical history to invoke an enduring artistic legacy through her collaborative endeavour, Ram Ratan Dhan. A spectacular affair returning to the NCPA after a successful show in July 2023, the performance will present cherished melodies of Lata Mangeshkar through five Indian classical dances that celebrate her evergreen voice using vocabularies that stretch the contours of traditional practice even as they remain rooted in the classical spirit.

Also taking the stage at Spectrum in a traditional margam performance will be the Bharatanatyam stalwart, Priyadarsini Govind. Odissi exponent Madhavi Mudgal and her troupe are among the line-up as well and will present riveting group choreographies that explore the classical genre in novel ways.

EXPLORING ARTICULATIONS 

An award-winning Bharatanatyam danseuse, Govind says, “We are a product of our times.” So even in studying a composition written thousands of years ago, an artiste’s interpretation would be reflective of our contemporary social, political and cultural climes. Govind will be bringing a margam on the NCPA stage after a long time and her performance will blend technical movements and abhinaya for a refreshing take on age-old verses.

This is also an attribute of her workshops. “What I like participants to take away is the approach and the understanding of the composition,” she says. They can then extrapolate from the word meanings the effect of a rasa (mood) based on its myriad interpretations. Govind will be hosting a workshop at Spectrum too, in which participants can gather insights on how to interpret and lay out a short composition.

With one eye on the future, Odissi exponent Mudgal explains that endeavours to imagine in newer ways are, in effect, an exercise in parampara which is essentially the flow of tradition. “Each successive generation of artistes adds their inputs to this flow,” she says. Classical dance is thus perpetually in flux, and following in the footsteps of her guru Kelucharan Mohapatra, the danseuse’s vision has been to present the ancient form in a refreshing manner without deviating from the classical. This spirit intact, the dancer has been engaged in discovering the possibilities of “many bodies moving together, doing the same or contrasting movements or overlapping different rhythms.” Mudgal bringing her troupe to the NCPA for an Odissi showcase is evidence of her innovative explorations of group choreography in what was, for the longest time, recognised as a solo performance practice.

This shift is a different way of doing things, she concedes, and is birthed in varied ways. For instance, the artiste’s take on abhinaya could mean that dancers enact several parts in each recital. In a storytelling narrative, she elaborates, “It is not that there is one Shiva and one Parvati.” It could interchange as dancers are not dressed in costume, making this a rather distinct approach to a dance style derived from Gotipua’s dance-drama traditions.

DYNAMIC INTERPRETATIONS 

Spectrum is an endeavour embedded in the dynamism of movement. With multiple exploratory performances being part of its line-up, it becomes testament to a reconfiguration of aesthetic sensibilities drawn from age-old practices.

So, when Varadkar returns to the NCPA in a curatorial effort that brings together Kathak, Bharatanatyam, Odissi, Manipuri and Mohiniattam, she performs an exercise in reimagining each dance style while being f irmly rooted in the classical. “Adding freshness to any dance form is required,” Varadkar opines, “but it has to be with some meaningful aesthetics.” To that effect, she has meticulously selected songs which cover Mangeshkar’s diverse musical range across multiple languages while ensuring that each melody suits a particular dance style. And she does so in rather imaginative ways. She pairs the Marathi song, ‘Aaj Gokulata Ranga’ with Manipuri, and while many would imagine this to be an odd coupling, the refined elegance of the Manipuri raas-leela in fact brilliantly celebrates a lyric describing Krishna enjoying the festival of colours with his gopis.

Such vision is evident in Mudgal’s contemplations too. In a career spanning over five decades, she has borrowed from her musical and architectural learnings to enrich her “experiential reservoir” that has translated into inventive choreographies. Mudgal is familiar with the NCPA’s stage—she has been performing at the cultural centre since the early 1970s, when audiences were smaller and auditoriums intimate. Now she examines possibilities of weaving music, poetry and rhythm through traditional movements and compositions to present group choreographies suited to large scale presentations.

For her part, Govind, hailing from Bharatanatyam’s Vazhuvoor school, performs a similar exercise while designing a renewed pedagogy for abhinaya by endowing it with a structure. The artiste, who served as director at the reputed Kalakshetra Foundation, is known for her mastery of expression and has worked on a format that, shesays, “will take you through abhinaya like you do nritta.” Govind elaborates, “The emphasis is on satvika abhinaya: how you understand satvika and how you translate it through your mind and body.” With this, the artiste codifies abhinaya within classical pedagogy yet introduces such shifts into learning and teaching techniques that would enable a performer to engage in an emotive dialogue with the audience. 

MOVEMENT AND INNOVATION 

A contemporary artiste whose productions are celebrated for their complexity and layered narrative, Palazhy’s choreographies make for a stunning display of innovation in movement and performance practice. Interactive technology figures prominently in his works, he explains, as it “allows us to develop that non-linear kind of narrative” which turns a dance performance into a “trans-disciplinary practice” that transcends stringent rules and develops new kinds of organising principles.

When working with visual artists and music composers Palazhy often begins with a storyboard. “Each artist can infuse ideas into their particular artistic discipline and then that becomes the source material to create the final performance or production,” he explains.

Yet, in doing so, Palazhy is never too far from the classical idiom. With choreographies exploring yoga, classical dance traditions and Indian martial arts like Kalaripayattu, he expands on traditional aesthetics to process them and develop a new language. Tradition is significant, he maintains, “because knowingly or unknowingly it is actually part of our identity” and moving away from this collective heritage can become a futile exercise in alienation. Instead, he engages in a more productive process of gathering inspiration from tradition to present it “through tools and devices available in contemporary times.”

With a growing audience appreciative of sublime Indian dances, Varadkar remarks that ancient scriptures have only given us guidelines by classifying and codifying all gestures and body movements. What is left to the dancer is to then apply them in developing newer vocabularies, for therein lies the vigour of artistic practice integral to the classical form.

At Spectrum, the four artistes will thus be immersed in exploring complex imaginations, taking audiences beyond the frontiers of classical and non-classical, to instead present them with impactful work. As Varadkar suggests, “Dance is an art form which is never stagnant. It is movement in itself.”