It’s not fusion. It’s the coming together of dances and music, keeping their own identity very strongly,” specifies bharatnatyam dancer Rukmini Chatterjee. Paris-based Chatterjee is in Delhi for a classical dance show she has choreographed, titled Meetings, which brings together bharatnatyam, kathak, European ballet, and Indian and European classical music, to be performed in major cities across the country.
Chatterjee brings her ensemble productions to India every few years. This time she is here as part of the Bonjour India initiative of the Embassy of France, a cross-country effort to showcase traditional and contemporary French and Indian culture — and, in shows such as Meetings, a gentle blend of both.
The ensemble performances of Bonjour India, if not for their surreal quality, certainly stand out in terms of novelty.
In Chatterjee’s performance, which Delhi and Kolkata witnessed last week, the strains of the Indian raga and tabla on the stage, played live, blended perfectly with the ballerina’s movements, even as the kathak and bharatnatyam dancers moved seamlessly to the violin and cello.
“A few critics said they didn’t understand the storyline.
I told them, ‘There isn’t any apparent storyline.’ The idea is to have four forms, four bodies, locked in a game, with an interplay of energies and meeting of styles,” explains Chatterjee, who has trained under Mrinalini Sarabhai and performed across India and Europe.
Equally experimental is the show by Compagnie Kafig, a hip-hop troupe from France. The troupe has put together Wasteland Terrain Vague, a show that combines dance, theatre and circus. It is being performed across the country this week. Nine dancers, acrobats and actors blend hip-hop with flamenco, contemporary dance and acrobatics, telling a story of a bare space inhabited by a wizened old woman, a pretty young girl and a couple of disillusioned men. “For this show, I gathered on the stage what constituted my first approach to the performing arts — the circus — while dance and theatre is something that I have been aiming at,” says Mourad Merzouki, the artistic director of Compagnie Kafig.
Through the term “wasteland”, Merzouki has guided his troupe to a place “where anything is possible.” The idea is to bring to stage a colourful microcosm of that imagined space. “I want to talk about the strength of relationships that develop in these places.”
