In the way that colour-blindness fails anti-racism, Contemporary Dancers’ inability to pinpoint what it means to be a Contemporary Dancer deprives them of the possibility to examine their hegemony. They flail, already bored with the request to define their identity. As an outsider who’s now spent many years in Contemporary Dance studios, I can offer a non-exhaustive list of what it seems to mean to be a Contemporary Dancer…
Read MoreIndian Dance: Articulations/Tensions/Negotiations with Mandeep Raikhy
Watch a durational online session with Shivaangee Agrawal and Mandeep Raikhy discussing the embodiment of Indian dance in our current world. Based on their artistic practices and concerns, they invite diverse perspectives from guests across India and the UK
Read MoreInside the Institution: The Place
“The unpredictability of what will happen is what makes something alive. It is not about trying to recreate aesthetics or trying to make what people expect you to be making.”
Read MoreSamsara: A major new international collaboration
“When we were choreographing this production, we didn't know exactly what we were going to do, and it was on the way to the core of this work that we found out what we wanted to present.”
Read MoreVisibly Unpalatable
I am a practitioner of a dance form that not many white people have heard of, let alone are able to pronounce, so half the conversations I have are reduced to me trying to explain what I do. These conversations inaccurately render Bharatanatyam a minority practice, and I a minority artist, trying endlessly to relate what I do to an elusive notion of ‘mainstream dance’.
Read MoreDance Dialogues Residency
And I can’t deny it; there’s a part of me that feels deeply satisfied to see the tables turned; to see contemporary dancers challenged by the demands of a Bharatanatyam choreographer.
Read MoreDancing, Decolonising
Encountering reality in all its ungratifying glory is the cornerstone to staying sane; for being able to process ‘negative’ emotions and attend to trails of thought long enough to untangle complexity.
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