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Lost in abstraction- Padmini Chettur Modern dance is like modern art- make what you will of it. There is no grammar; there are no rules. Reaction is only through a gut feeling. Padmini Chettur from Chennai chose 'Fragility' as her theme in her contemporary dance presentation. So where does one look for it? It was not in the movements, it was not in the background score, it was not in the dancers. As Padmini admitted later during the interface, "I was looking for fragility in the choreography rather than in the movements or in the dancers themselves." A further explanation in the brochure went thus, "Fragility is to do with walking on the edge, with being vulnerable. ...A world where breaths are held, where muscles tremble, where emotions flow." None of this was apparent to the eye, though one attempted to decipher every move the dancers made.
Padmini and her group of dancers performed non-stop for 70 minutes in a stark stage setting devoid of any decor. There was pin drop silence and the meager stage lighting mitigated the darkness of the auditorium. The dancers seemed to be exploring their own personal spaces, each one in isolation. Was that a reference to our individual life journeys? The movements indicated excellent body control and suppleness. They were repetitive though. Did that suggest the monotonous routine that we go through everyday? The dancers were stiff like mannequins; they seemed to be trying to accomplish something. Maybe reflective of the endless striving that we embark on in our lives? Music was by Martin Visser, a saxophone player from Holland, now settled in Chennai. It was totally alien- it seemed more like an ad-hoc assortment of sounds. Composed to supposedly suit the choreography and the theme, there was no correlation between music and dance. Most interesting of the 'sounds' was the 'babbling'. While one did get distracted trying to make sense of it, it suggested a resourceful mind that would spend time creating something that did not make sense. Were they trying to imitate the continuous murmuring that goes on in the head? A whole sequence used this gibberish as a background. Besides this was a sequence that used percussion instruments. Throughout the presentation the saxophone was in evidence providing the counter balance to the other sounds. In the last sequence the four dancers seemed to 'connect'. Disbanding the isolation, they seemed to reach out to each other. Had the spell of fragility been broken? Or had they discovered ways of coping with it? One had to keep looking for meanings at every point. Isn't art something that one can sit back and enjoy? Or is it our mind set that we are not able to relax and enjoy unless we understand every nuance? Then this serves as a tool for widening one's horizons. Padmini has been working on this production for a year now. Her venture was a co-production with Schaubuhne am Lehniner Platz, Berlin and Theatre de la Ville, Paris. She has a background of classical and contemporary dance; she also has the self-confidence to experiment. What can stop her then? |
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