Solo (excerpt from Namasya)

À partir de la technique pure de la danse indienne, voyagerons-nous vers une une autre manière de vivre la danse ? Ou bien le “Rasa“, la saveur, qui émane de la danse n’est-il pas si différent que le porterait à croire le contraste apparent des formes ?

With an Indian classical dance background, my first experience with another way of dancing was my work with Pina Bausch. My meeting with her was one of the most powerful in my whole career, both in human and in artistic terms. With her immense talent, sensitivity and generosity, she opened up for me the door to a new gestural universe. With her and her dancers, I learnt to think and to feel movement differently, from its design through to its execution: spontaneity, freedom and rigour, fluidity, movement flowing from the body but also from the heart.

There is an apparent contrast between Amagatsu’s universe, fabricated with slowness, sketches and abstraction, and that of Indian dance, rhythmic and rapid, ornamented and narrative. However, both practices meet in their end goal: the light given off and the intensity of emotion. 

The project is thus the result of an evening spent around two solis worked on with these two choreographers whom I admire and whose choreographic universe, extremely personal and special, touches me and finds a resonance in my artistic sensibility. 

Their work had a magnetic effect on me and rekindled my desire to explore the movement and the emotion given off. 

I was truly won over by the idea of working with these choreographers on the basis of my Indian classical dance gestures and technique, believing in the universality of dance and the movement and emotion they provoke, with no need for a shared technical language.

Based on the pure technique of Indian dance, will we travel towards another form of narrative, another way of experiencing and feeling dance? Or is the Rasa, the flavour which emanates from dance, not as different as the apparent contrast of forms would lead us to believe? 

Mirroring my fascination for Kuchipudi art, my desire to take this path to explore dance is also extremely intense. Along this path, nothing can be compared to the exceptional privilege of working with these great artists and of embodying the link uniting them for the space of one evening.

Source: Shantala Shivalingappa