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First Last Thoughts on Michael Jackson and Pina Bausch

By Seika Boye

When pop icon Michael Jackson and German choreographer Pina Bausch died within five days of one another in late June, my Facebook homepage was suddenly filled with the voices of dancers. The messages were mournful, celebratory, contemplative – thankful. YouTube clips of Bausch and her work recall a master whose vision so many in contemporary dance spend a career chasing – still. Footage of Jackson takes us into the music, the dancing, again, as good as the first time – still.

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As people asked “And now Pina?” following the news of Jackson’s death, the two became locked in a strange association. An unlikely duo in life, their deaths so close to one another illuminated them, together, mega icons in the world of dance, whose influence and inspiration shifted, slid and cracked our ways of moving and seeing movement. Where would we be without them? And I wondered, what, if anything, can we see looking at them together?

First a few words from Anna …

Two reviews, written in the eighties by New York Times dance critic Anna Kisselgoff, help to encapsulate the impact of Bausch and Jackson at the heights of their careers.

About Bausch in October 1985, Kisselgoff wrote, “Like the Pied Piper, Pina Bausch is literally followed by followers – in this case, young dancers pleading to join her West German company. The impact left by the 1984 United States debut of the Pina Bausch Tanztheater Wuppertal, which is appearing at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in a return engagement, has been deeply felt.”

Of Michael Jackson during his 1988 Bad tour: “… look past the occasional suggestive gesture and rotating pelvis, marvel at the backward gliding moonwalk and the isolated body parts – seemingly set into motion on their own – and you see a virtuoso dancer who uses movement for its own sake …. Yes, Michael Jackson is an avant-garde dancer, and his dances could be called abstract. Like Merce Cunningham, he shows us that movement has a value of its own and that what we read into it is provided by the theatrical context around it.”




Influence and Inspiration

To make sense of a lingering need to reflect upon Bausch and Jackson, I spoke in person with Toronto-based scholar and dance artist Darcey Callison and dance artist Ame Henderson and briefly on-line with improvising dancer Aimeé Dawn Robinson.

I began by asking whether or not Callison, Henderson and Robinson have been influenced or inspired by one or both of the recently departed.

Henderson, noting the big difference between influence and inspiration, stated, “Sure, I’ve been influenced by them both, it’s impossible not to be, but in terms of seeing mimetic influence repeated in my own work, no. Inspired? I have definitely been inspired – in terms of being given permission to do one’s own work …. Especially with Jackson, in his utter completeness of the way he worked as a performer … and, even more so than Pina, in every way he cannot be explained.”

Unlike Robinson, who was a young girl at the beginning of the eighties, listening to records, watching videos and “being inspired by Jackson’s intoxicating lack of inhibition”, Callison was then a money-strapped independent dancer. A personal TV was a luxury, one he did not have, so he missed the height of the Jackson craze. His artistic interests were also in a different field. He said of his community at the time, “In the eighties particularly, I didn’t know anyone who wasn’t trying to emulate Pina, especially independent choreographers. There weren’t any videos but she visited Toronto in the early 1980s and performed Café Müller and The Rite of Spring at the Ryerson Theatre. Her influence was huge. I didn’t see the performance, but I heard about it.”

The Rite of Spring, Bausch’s celebrated 1975 work, which Callison later accessed on film and saw live, is, he says, “inspiring in terms of being uncompromising. It’s not narrative or literal, but you know these characters … and more than that, I think it’s about a struggle to bring life into the world … It was a seminal work, like Kurt Jooss’ The Green Table. It touches something so deep. It’s so visceral; it is so much a dance.”



Dance-Theatre and The Music Video

“How people put ballets together now is very different from what people were doing in the eighties.” Callison comments, “The images that people are willing to put together on stage at the same time, the movement vocabulary that they’re willing to put inside of a ballet, you would not have seen that on stage in the eighties. Pina Bausch opened that up. People are just more interested in personal movement, theatrical movement, idiosyncratic movement.”

As Bausch revolutionized contemporary dance and brought what we know today as dance-theatre to the stage, Jackson was rocking MTV. His record sales and the popularity of his ground breaking videos for singles from his Thriller album gave programmers no choice but to play them, at a time when most of the artists being given air time were white. The videos for Thriller, Beat It and Billy Jean gave the music video new power and consequently changed the nature of the recording industry.

Though their performance spaces and genres were different, the impact of Jackson’s and Bausch’s experimentation, risk-taking and imagination makes it impossible to look at a trajectory of dance on stage and television from the mid-1970s onward without looking to them as essential to understanding the progression of dance in the last quarter of the twentieth century.



Look and Learn

Although Darcey Callison missed Michael Jackson in the eighties, he is well versed in the career and work of the pop star. About five years into his teaching career within York University’s Department of Dance, Callison encountered a student in a survey course for non-dancers who was completely self taught and had learned to dance entirely from Michael Jackson videos. Shocked and inspired, Callison realized he needed to learn more about the singer and in the process discovered that many, many, of his students had similar stories, or had at least been drawn to dance by Jackson. “I think his work is a real culminating point for dance identities, for the joy of dancing for a generation,” Callison says.

Henderson recalls being introduced to Bausch for the first time in a history course while an undergraduate student in the mid 1990s: “I was totally enraptured by her. I think it was really the beginning of a relationship I’ve had to many, many artists that is other than through seeing their work live … A lot of the references that I have are through text and images. This is interesting in terms of legacy. What are the means that we have to access the work or artists?”

The relationship to both Bausch and Jackson that the majority of fans and followers have, in Canada at least, is through film and television, photographs and text. Translating and communicating dance in person, being able to truly affect and move the viewer, is a lifetime’s challenge. Succeeding at this through dance on screen is another challenge altogether. Watching Jackson and Bausch in succession I asked, what is it?

Abandon, passion, necessity, belief – joy in performance – even when the theme may be tragic? One is literally moved to move. Robinson reflects, “We carry our memories inside of our bodies …. My happiest times as a performing dancer are those little moments when I have a flicker of the feeling of dancing to MJ in the basement.” Henderson comments: “It’s like a kinesthetic influence or exchange. It’s as if they’re dancing for their lives – always.”



Reading Repetition

Beyond the breadth of their influence, the artists share other common ground. The use of repetition and both artists’ preoccupations with expressing genuine qualities of humanity are among the motifs noted in both of their work.

Repetition was a theme discussed in the Kisselgoff articles referenced earlier. She quoted Bausch, “‘Repetition is not repetition,’ she says. ‘The same action makes you feel something completely different by the end. I repeat something and after three times, the person should react.’” And about Jackson she wrote, “Notice how many times Mr. Jackson takes your breath away with his rapid-fire flat-footed turns, his staccato gestures, his burst of movement from any part of the body and you will see that the steps and sequences are often repeated. But their rhythms and phrasing are changed along with the studded jackets; the words shower the same dances with a torrent of varying emotion while laser beams light up the imagined sky.”

Both artists also faced extreme criticism. Jackson’s sexual gestures and morphing physical appearance became more talked about than his music and Bausch was harshly criticized for muddying “pure dance” and for being inaccessible.

When I asked Callison about the trajectory between students being inspired by Jackson and students learning to appreciate Bausch he says, “I have tried very hard not to make a distinction between so called high and low art. I want students to go with what inspires them … One of my first challenges is getting students to understand that they are creating dances for the stage and not television. That is a first step in terms of trajectory.”

He continues, “I think the role of a BFA is to get students to understand that what the body communicates has ramifications.” He notes the overtly sexualized nature of video dancing today and the resistance students have to even discussing or acknowledging what these movements are saying. “Michael Jackson certainly did not make it easier. What students can learn from Bausch, if they are willing, is that there is a different impulse and way of putting things on stage. With Michael Jackson the hit is easy … Sometimes with Bausch you need to view things a second or third time. I think the window into what Bausch does comes from a sustained training in improvisation.” But, he realizes that it’s not for everyone, and he has great respect for the role of the entertainer. “I’d even love to be one in another life,” he says.











Post

In the end, how does it matter that these artists have left us? Does it change the way we view their individual works, their bodies of work?

“I think the aura of an art work exists outside of the artist – our relationship with the art work is different than our relationship to the artist,” reflects Henderson. Will we see a resurgence of their influence with the swell of interest in the wake of their deaths? “I like the word re-calibrate,” says Henderson, “How do we make something make sense? Is it possible that, with the passing of these people, that their work has a different kind of sensibility in terms of how it is understood? How do we track forward and backward in time in terms of tracing their influence? My boyfriend says the musician Steve Earle talks about preparing for a post-Dylan world. There is something about the ‘post’. What are we moving towards?”

Post-Jackson. Post-Bausch. With the height of their influence having been over twenty years ago, can we already see where they have taken us? Will new reflections following their deaths take us to new places? In mourning those who inspired us artistically, is reflecting upon where they took us in the first place the ultimate homage, or is there more to it?

I remember encountering Michael Jackson, and dancing with him via the screen. Little him and little me, I wanted to feel what he was feeling and so I moved my body in an attempt. I was addicted and dancing became my life, like so many others. Somewhere around the age of twenty, with MJ in the far recesses of my mind, in a stuffy, poorly lit classroom choreographer and teacher Anna Blewchamp dimmed the lights and pressed play on a video of Pina Bausch’s Tanztheatrer Wuppertal. I don’t recall the work, but I recall the feeling. I think it is best described as relief. Dance could say more, move more, evoke more, than I had known up to then. I very likely cried.

In an homage to his artistic mentor and inspiration, Bob Dylan himself wrote Last Thoughts on Woodie Guthrie. It begins:

When yer head gets twisted and yer mind grows numb
When you think you’re too old, too young, too smart or too dumb
When yer laggin’ behind an’ losin’ yer pace
In a slow-motion crawl of life’s busy race
…

… you get the point. And Dylan’s point, I think, is that Guthrie was, is, a destination. And so too are Bausch and Jackson, still. Their deaths have caused us to look back, reflect, re-calibrate. But I suggest we take it a step further. Let’s look back again in a few months, and in a few years. Let’s look at them with fresh eyes. Let’s allow how we change to impact the way we see them and maybe the way we see them will change too. And it will be like seeing them, again, for the first time.

Toward the end of writing this article the passing of the great Merce Cunningham was announced in the news. He was very present in the interviews and in the writing. He is another destination unto himself. Maybe I’ll see you there.

Seika Boye is a freelance writer, editor, marketing/communications consultant and dance artist. She is a former department editor with The Dance Current magazine and has been affiliated with Dance Collection Danse since 2004.

The Weight of Words

The Second États généraux de la danse professionnelle du Québec
by Marie Claire Forté

“The written word endures and is eventually accepted as authority,” proclaimed Regroupement québécois de la danse (RQD) director Lorraine Hébert at the launch of the second États généraux de la danse professionnelle du Québec, a summit conference on professional dance in the province. A striking statement for an art form whose transmission relies on the body.

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Following up on their first such event held in 1994, the RQD, a provincial dance service and advocacy organization, began planning for this summit conference in November 2003. In 2006, they published a report on the results of the first summit conference and ensuing 1994–1997 triennial plan. At the annual general meeting in October 2007, the RQD launched the “Grands Chantiers de la danse”, a vast research and consultation process. In the wake of this meeting, a steering committee decided on five specific axes of study, delegated to five research committees: 1) Renewal of the discipline: continuity and change; 2) Paradoxes and challenges in a qualified work force; 3) Conditions of practice and artistic requirements; 4) Consolidation and regeneration of the dance [infra]structure; and 5) Dance territories: anchors and nomadism. For two years, members of these committees volunteered over 4000 hours in total, meeting among themselves, soliciting information from the RQD membership and the community at large and submitting over 200 recommendations back to the steering committee. Addressed to funding bodies, institutions and the dance milieu, these recommendations aim to ensure the sustainable and vital growth of the art form. The steering committee paired them down to seventy-nine, distributed along with a discussion of their groundwork in the 119-page participant catalogue for the summit conference.

On April 26th, during a seven-hour closing plenary session, over 200 dance professionals voted on these seventy-nine recommendations, plus 112 amendments and twelve new recommendations issued from two days of workshops April 24th and 25th. These have been submitted back to the RQD and the steering committee. The project will culminate in April 2010, when the steering committee will present a master plan for dance in Québec for the next ten years. These second États généraux were weighted with information and process.



Opening night, a type of launch/performance party, was the exception. Circuit-Est transformed their Jeanne-Renaud studio into a reception hall, with small round tables, bistro-style. With great emotion, Hébert and Anik Bisonnette, chair of the RQD, gave speeches alongside Simon Brault, vice-chair of the Canada Council for the Arts, Louise Roy, chair of the Conseil des arts de Montréal, Yvan Gauthier, chair and general manager of the Conseil des arts et lettres du Québec, and Christine St-Pierre, Québec’s minister of Culture, Communications and the Status of Women. Rencontres revisitées, a video installation and performance by Alain Francœur in honour of the dance profession, followed. After, the chairs of the five research committees delivered "Ours in Solidarity", a declaration of intent written by Hébert, inspired by recommendations issued from the Grands Chantiers. Catherine Lavoie-Marcus, research assistant at the RQD, then unveiled the Toile-mémoire de la danse au Québec, a “memory-web” of dance professionals in Québec since 1900, presented on a large, flat digital screen, with names linked via affiliations with notable artists, schools and companies. A bout of festive networking ensued.

The following two days were dedicated to workshops, where recommendations were discussed, amended and adopted. Out of a possible three, I was able to attend one. I registered for a workshop on Dance territories: anchors and nomadism; it was informative to have the time to discuss each recommendation and to get more background information from one research committee in particular. Even then, I sometimes felt ill equipped to take a stand because my knowledge of the issues was incomplete. Consensus was a clear goal of the workshop I participated in, though wording was often cause for great debate. Over the course of three hours, the focus shifted many times from the placement of a comma to voting on all of the many recommendations. In the afternoon, Lavoie-Marcus formally presented her Toile-mémoire with one of her project supervisors, Michèle Febvre (the other, Philip Szporer, was absent), insisting on the work-in-progress nature of the image.

On the last day, the plenary played out a now familiar tension between the details of wording and the bigger picture. Debate topics included the need for more infrastructure; provincial, national and international touring strategies; preservation practices; and generational bridging plans.

I was both excited and exasperated to have so many people caring about words. Because of the breadth of the issues, the sheer number of recommendations and the process of debating and voting, and despite rigorous work by the plenary chair, we occasionally bumbled through big questions, cutting the discussion short and voting despite lingering questions from different members. There was an ongoing confusion for me between distant dreams and concrete possibilities. This was brought up by a question about the possibility of securing funding for rather lofty goals and one member offered that “we cannot always be logical, we must be political”, suggesting that we should request the money for every project knowing that the outcome will be uncertain. Though the plenary was governed by a desire for consensus, some recommendations were reworked entirely during this session.

It was inspiring to interact with so many different players within the dance sector in Québec. I am proud to be part of a community with so many impassioned, well-spoken individuals. My dance activities do not afford me many opportunities to chat with a dance company’s accountant, nor to listen to a presenter’s needs for specific funding, nor to participate in a debate about teaching certification for dance in public schools. Meeting so many different people allowed me to broaden my horizons, and engaging in longer conversations with a few individuals gave me a sense of different perspectives within the community.

Registration for the summit conference was divided by electoral college as follows: dancers, rehearsal directors: 45; choreographers, companies and production designers: 67 (I didn’t notice any designers); professional schools, teachers and researchers: 23; and presenters, service organizations, festivals, cultural workers, associations/networks: 49. The majority of attendees were from Montréal (239 versus 20 from Québec City and other regions), primarily working in contemporary dance. This demographic is consistent with statistics published on the 1994 summit conference. Interestingly, one of the issues that arose from the workshops addressed the need to reflect on the diversity of artistic practices in the milieu.

The amended recommendations are now back with the RQD and will be articulated in a ten-year master plan. Notable outcomes of the first triennial plan submitted in 1994 included La Danse sur les routes du Québec, a provincial network for dance touring, and several new dance presenters. In a 1995 press release regarding the implementation of the first triennial plan for professional dance in Québec, the RQD said: “We are of course aware that the current economic and social situation is not the most auspicious one in which to consider the development of an artistic discipline. However, the dance community considers that the process, and the resultant synthesis which we submit today, reflect the hope that we will overcome the prevailing gloom and that there will be a resurgence in the development of the arts in general and of dance in particular once our society recovers from what must be called a crisis in values, a crisis which translates into instability of the social climate, economic stagnation, and a radical calling into question of the social contract.”

In lieu of the current economic and social crisis, potentially more transformative than the one cited in 1994, will this same statement apply in April 2010 when the RQD presents its master plan? I personally hope that the vision of our community leaders will translate the weight of words into action, and that these actions will “overcome the prevailing gloom”, lighting the future path for dance in Québec.

Declaration of Intent: "Ours in Solidarity"
Déclaration d'intentions: "Solidairement nôtre"


Marie Claire Forté is a dancer and choreographer and also works as a translator and writer. She has performed and presented her work primarily with Le Groupe Dance Lab in Ottawa, from 2004 through 2008. Currently, she dances for choreographers in Montréal and Toronto.

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www.quebecdanse.org

CALLS TO WRITERS

Situating Dance
Volume 12: 2009/2010

2 calls for writers …

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1: Call for articles and essays that situate dance in a broader cultural context or make links between dance and socio-cultural issues and ideas.

> focus on current Canadian dance and dance artists
> must be original, unpublished writing/photography
> completed submissions only (no drafts or queries)
> creative approaches are welcome
> English, French or bilingual format
> if selected for publication, pieces will be shaped or adapted through collaboration
with the editor
> pdf files only; plain text, single-spaced, no formatting
> 1500-2000 words; payment upon publication*

DEADLINE: JUNE 19, 2009

>> Email pdf files only: dc.editor@thedancecurrent.com
*Only submissions considered for publication will be contacted.

2: Call for Canadian writers interested in reviewing/responding to dance performances. Seeking strong writers with in-depth understanding of dance forms and practices, and knowledge of artistic, historical and cultural contexts. Emerging and established writers welcome.

> Submit a letter of interest/intent, outlining why you would like to contribute
> Include 2 complete writing samples, specifically reviews or performance responses, approx. 500-1000 words
> Provide a resumé outlining both your dance and writing experience
> Writers must be available to work on freelance assignment
> Opportunities limited by budgetary resources

DEADLINE: JULY 24, 2009

>> Email pdf files only: dc.editor@thedancecurrent.com
*Only applicants considered for assignment will be contacted.

UNDERCURRENTS: Menaka Thakkar & Sudha Khandwani

December 2008/January 2009

Interview with Menaka Thakkar and Sudha Khandwani
by Megan Andrews

Photo of Menaka Thakkar and Sudha Khandwani / courtesy of subjects

Menaka Thakkar of the Menaka Thakkar Dance Company and her sister Sudha Khandwani of Kalanidhi Fine Arts of Canada are co-producers of the upcoming International Dance Festival and Conference: Contemporary
Choreography in Indian Dance.

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You are interested in questioning what is “contemporary” in Indian dance both in India and in Canada. This issue has long been at the centre of your work in various ways, through collaborative productions with western contemporary artists and through your own choreographic explorations, for example. What is the significance of asking this question today?

Menaka: It is true that during the period of my own development of ideas about new directions for Indian dance, I explored various different possibilities, and collaborated with several western contemporary choreographers and music composers. One of my contemporary creations of that period was nominated for the Dora Mavor Moore Award for new choreography. Working with these artists stimulated me as much as it raised a large number of basic and often troubling questions as to what exactly is the notion of “contemporary” as against the “traditional” dance and what are the most appropriate directions to develop contemporary choreography in Indian dance? Many of my collaborators shared my concerns and thinking about these issues. But then, there were others who expected a certain specific “look and feel” and “creative process” of a choreographic work to be recognized as “contemporary”, without considering that their own notions and definitions were so much a product of their own cultural history and the tensions which had characterized their own “traditional” and “modern”, “post modern” or “contemporary” art forms.

The terms, “contemporary” and “traditional” are at best elusive and become meaningful only when understood in the context of a tradition’s unique history and its present status. The terms do refer to and revolve around an essential spirit and perspective with which life is interpreted through art. But, the contemporary dance can not be homogeneous over all cultures even when it is fundamentally shaped by a common essential temper, for this underlying spirit itself will find its expression through diversely cultivated cultural symbols, dance vocabularies and theatrical conventions. Of course these too can be, and are indeed, challenged and reexamined. But this need not wipe out essential cultural diversity and impose a new conformity on all contemporary dance. All contemporary art, although bound by a common spirit of the age will still remain culturally differentiated in its manifestation. All these are valid on their own terms and stimulate very rewarding cultural experiences if one can be open to them.

There are a number of other interesting issues around the notions of “contemporary” and “traditional” which have arisen with different urgencies and different emphases in several related art forms, including visual art, music and literature. It will be clearly to the benefit of our art to think of some of these issues in a larger framework of diverse cultures and art forms that are both differentiated and interrelated at the same time. This is true not only for a deeper understanding of the historical development of modern or contemporary movements in European and North American art forms including dance, but even more true in dealing with the questions, concerns and tensions that underlie the contemporary movements in several Indian art forms including dance. In fact, for the Indian case, one can properly grasp the issues, rationale and the direction of development of contemporary dance only if they are examined in the context of a comprehensive modernizing process that started as a uniquely Indian response and has been at work for more than a century, covering in its sweep several fields of human activity and institutions and leaving its large impact, directly or indirectly, on the Indian psyche.

At another level, the concepts of time, space, human psyche and human body -- along with the nature of forces that animate and energize it all -- will come in for a reexamination and will affect the nature of contemporary dance in India. Movement of Time, in Indian perception, is not linear; it is cyclic. And thus “past” or “traditional” practices and concepts may become relevant to us and will often come back as “modern” or “contemporary”, such as the humanistic concept of art of the ancient Greeks which has come back to us in our times. Or the insight of modern physics that locates the origin of matter and material energies at those non-manifest levels of reality that are beyond our grasp by the normal sense perception. This hierarchical view of the existence of reality where each level is connected with different human cognitive faculties, which are in the process of evolution, is a strongly held philosophical and spiritual position in India. The traditional Indian systems of Yoga were intended to aid and accelerate this evolution in an individual so that connection could be established with the other levels of reality. A dancer who primarily explores physicality and functions through physical energy will therefore work with the system of physical Yoga (Hatha Yoga) whose postures, breathing and movement vocabulary connect with those subtle centres of physical energy. This realization has made (Hatha) yogic exploration of movements an integral part of the emerging contemporary Indian dance in the approach taken by several choreographers and interpreters. Here, an ancient tradition is seen to be an essential part of a contemporary dance movement.

I am aware that there are several other choreographers who too have explored this area, deeply thought about it and created their contemporary works often adopting different approaches. I now feel that the time has come when my company has to formally integrate our own history with the creative talents of all these other artists by creating and offering a formal space to generate discussions and understanding of alternative visions, and creative efforts. That is why I have jointly organized this event with Sudha. This will hopefully gather together other creative minds to discuss, analyze and showcase explorations in contemporary dance, and to create stability and continuity of effort in place of disjunctions and uncertainty of ad hoc efforts. If successfully stabilized and sustained, this will build new energies.

It seems that South Asian practitioners are among those at the forefront in critically examining the cultural forces of both tradition and innovation in artistic work. Do you agree? If so, why do you think this is the case?

Sudha: It is true that dance artists and dance scholars in both India and the Indian Diaspora around the world have remained very actively preoccupied with the issues of tradition, innovation, modernity, etc. In order to understand it fully, one has to consider the unique nature of the struggle for independence of the colonial India in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. This struggle was not limited to political independence from the British; it was a sweeping and integrated process of a total transformation of India’s society, political system, religious institutions, and artistic and cultural regeneration. The leaders were acutely aware of a dual concern to reclaim India’s unique identity and heritage while reforming and modernizing many of the social practices and institutions. Often the dual concerns seemed to find their simultaneous fulfillment in reviving the values and practices of the ancient past in their original pure forms, which often looked surprisingly modern or were easily reconcilable within the contemporary spirit. Thus many of the modern social, cultural, religious and other ideas and movements, often received from abroad, were “Indianized”. Thus socialism, feminism, the fight against colonialism, artistic practice, etc. embodied both the contemporary spirit and the “Indian” cultural worldview. The revival and reformation of Indian dance systems, which were part of this general process, were seen to be both the reclaiming of the tradition and its modernization at once. Thus the development of contemporary art forms often generates an ambiguous response of tension as well as a sense of organic growth of tradition aided by deep contemplation, not a rebellion. For example, contemporary artists like Chandralekha would go much deeper in the yogic and martial art tradition of India to understand the movements and process of energy generation and integrate that insight with the inner form of Indian dance, devoid of many outer superficialities, to create contemporary Indian dance.

When you describe your work, do you prefer the term Indian or South Asian?

Menaka: These labels serve different purposes and, in the right context, are useful. Otherwise they are too broad and ignore real regional, cultural and stylistic-technical differences. I use specific terms such as bharatanatyam or odissi or kathak for the styles I practice. To speak at the level of recognizable commonalities of various dance styles, I use “Indian”; that is broad enough for me. I find “South Asian” rather too broad and thus misleading, although it is commonly used in the UK, the USA and Canada.

Kalanidhi Fine Arts of Canada has been presenting festivals and conferences since 1993. How does this festival and conference event relate to its predecessor, the Kalanidhi International Dance Festival and Conference? What new initiatives are you introducing in this collaborative program?

Sudha: Kalanidhi’s mandate and vision particularly emphasize the promotion of contemporary works of Indian dance and facilitate the exploration of all its creative-aesthetic as well as intellectual-analytical issues. I organized, right at its inception, the first Kalanidhi International Dance Festival and Conference in February 1993 on the theme of contemporary dance in India under the title “New Directions in Indian Dance”. This premier undertaking was indeed not intended to minimize the importance of traditional dance, but to bring it in proper balance by dispelling the then-prevailing myth that all Indian dance was only its traditional form and that its repertoire reflected the sensibilities of bygone ages. Since then Kalanidhi organized a variety of such events revealing the range and beauty of both traditional and contemporary Indian dance, including the works and visions of young choreographers and performers born and raised in the Indian Diaspora around the world, where they necessarily straddle the two cultures.

In 2004 and 2006, I organized a two-part festival and conference, “A Century of Indian Dance” covering a period of the last 100 years, eight classical dance systems and seven different countries around the world. The intent was to witness and understand the recent evolution of Indian dance and the process of building and rebuilding of its traditions. Although a few choreographers from the Diaspora presented their contemporary works – representing an important branch of Indian dance-in-evolution during that vibrant period – a good deal of important exploration and new works which have been going on, particularly in the last thirty years or so, remained to be systematically presented. It is therefore natural, almost imperative, that the unfinished and constantly evolving story of that century be taken up and continued in the upcoming festival-conference activities of 2008/2009.

The major new initiative of this event is to place the pioneering role of the renowned choreographer, Chandralekha (who passed away on December 30th, 2006) in central focus and pay tribute to her for her contribution to the development of contemporary Indian dance. It is significant that Canada has had the distinction of having hosted her four times (I first invited her in 1993 to participate in Kalanidhi’s first festival). I then helped organize her two-week residency at the Toronto Dance Theatre, followed by a Canadian six-city tour of her company performing her then-latest work “Mahakala”. Before the tour, Chandralekha was also presented by the Harbourfront’s Movado Dance Series over six evenings.

Another initiative is to invite German dancer-choreographer Susanne Linke, who was very close to Chandralekha and sometimes provided critical feedback on her new works. Susanne will speak about Chandralekha’s contribution to contemporary dance, and also perform a piece of her own creation followed by another solo performance by her partner. In addition, the last work that Chandralekha had completed before she passed away will be performed by her dancers from India. Sadanand Menon, Chandralekha’s long-time associate and collaborator will give a complete idea of her life, work and views on dance, supported by excerpts of her works.

Who is your intended audience for the event and what can they expect from the experience?

Menaka: At one end, our intended audience will come from the practitioners of any Indian dance system: choreographers, teachers, students and the general audiences of Indian dance. More generally, most practitioners of all culturally diverse dance forms and their audiences should also be interested, because although the issues of contemporary dance and their approaches to creations of works will be presented in the specific context of Indian dance, most of them are going to be clearly relevant to these other dance cultures. Most generally, all these issues and the creative visions in the open global cultural scene of evolving dance will be of relevance to the Euro-centric and North American dance practitioners, both contemporary, ballet and contemporary-ballet. Some of the concerns reflected in the creations, performance practices and philosophical discourse will ultimately touch upon notions of contemporary aesthetics and sensibilities, in the context of differentiated cultural and social histories, political realities and rapidly evolving technological possibilities. All these factors will connect and bind not only different dance forms but various different art forms in general: music, theatre, visual arts, literature, etc. Our intended audience resides in those related areas too.

Do you see this event as a kind of continuation of Chandralekha’s legacy? If so, how? What is your personal connection to her and her work?

Menaka: Not in any direct way. Neither this event nor the works presented at this festival constitute a direct legacy of Chandralekha (except her own work which will be presented on January 24th); but it will be abundantly clear from the presentations at the conference that any serious thinking and creation of a work of Indian dance, or for that matter any dance, will involve the issues that she had been so passionately and deeply exploring and the directions that she had been pointing out for our serious consideration. It is particularly important to understand her views and gain an insight into her creative process for those of us who are asking perhaps the same questions that she asked and are struggling perhaps with the same issues of contemporary dance that she had deeply thought about. This is the most important legacy that she has left for us, all dancers of all genres.

As for her direct legacy, it is highly unfortunate that although of deep significance for the development of contemporary Indian dance, many of her works have not been seen widely; her own company does not exist anymore. An honest understanding and objective evaluation of her life and art are lacking. And now she has passed away, leaving a large body of some of the most radical and deeply explored works of Indian dance, which will have an enormous impact on future dance. My own company is now engaged in acquiring a few selected works of Chandralekha, for which much prior training in body conditioning exercises derived from kallari payattu (Indian martial art), yoga and other physical cultures is being imparted to my company dancers, who are training in one of her works at present. This process will continue for quite some time so that the company will be able to acquire a few other works too, which I find valuable for my company dancers. This is the kind of work for which I have recently set-up two important units in my company: MTDC Dance Lab and MTDC Unit of Contemporary Choreography.

Sudha: In a personal way, I had a strong link with Chandralekha both as a friend and as someone who fully believed in her and helped to promote her in Canada. Being a bharatanatyam dancer myself, I had seen her dance in the late 1950s when she was at the peak of her performing career as a bharatanatyam dancer. I continued to watch her until she suddenly dropped out of the dance scene altogether in the early 1960s because of her disenchantment and disillusionment with some aspects of the practice of this dance form. She then became a free spirit and explored her creativity in an amazing variety of things such as poetry, articles, haikus, a long prose-poem, called “Kamala”, hand-made books on ecology. She then travelled, doing nothing in particular, met with Merce Cunningham and John Cage in New York, and became subject of a poster and an experimental film. I briefly picked up the link when, in 1972, she produced a single landmark work, “Navagraha”. However, her real comeback to dance was in 1984 when she presented some very radical and insightful ideas on developing contemporary Indian dance at a seminar called East West Encounter. After that, she never looked back and her creativity became prolific and increasingly original. In 1993, I invited her to participate in the first Kalanidhi festival. We became much closer and spent many an hour discussing a variety of things about her views and experiences with contemporary dance. Those were the most pleasurable times of my life. She was a most warm and open person.

*An excerpted version of this interview appears in the December 2008/January 2009 print issue of The Dance Current.

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www.menakathakkardance.org
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