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2nd December, 2007 Museum Theatre 7 pm. ‘The Journey Inward : Devi Mahatmya’ a dance presentation by Dr. Mallika SarabhaiDevi, the Goddess, takes many forms and names in India, reflecting the deep Indian notion that creation and destruction constitute an ongoing cyclical process. Devi is sensuously seductive and deadly in combat, the great mother who reveals herself in her creative and destructive aspects. Experience this multi-dimensional performance created using American author Suzanne Ironbiter's text with music composed by Indian rock/blues duo Mark and Philipe Haydon and sets and costumes designed by Australian Jodie Fried. Original Poem : Suzanne Ironbiter Choreography : Mallika Sarabhai, assisted by Padmakumar and Revanta Sarabhai Music : Mark and Philipe Haydon Production Design : Jodie Fried Performed by : Mallika Sarabhai and the Darpana Performing Group Videoscape :Yadavan Chandran Lighting Design : Revanta Sarabhai
Language : English Running Time : 70 minutes Group Size : 18
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3rd December, 2007, Museum Theatre, 7 pm. Stagesmith’s There's jazz, there's rock n roll. DIRECTOR’S NOTE This is a story that was waiting to be told, lying buried under the colossal commercial Behemoth called Bollywood.I was immediately attracted to the material, being a Goan and living in Bandra … And there was Jazz My connection with Naresh, Ramu, Denzil and Rhys goes way back, we were all Stanislites (except Naresh and Denzil, they went to St. Andrew’s). There’s fish curry, rice and sorpotel. There’s a hopeless love for storytelling, music and an addiction to the stage. JAZZ is a glorious journey to the grave conjuring up characters, relationships, loves and times. Here, the past is inextricably woven into the present. The mentor and the pupil, the stage and the screen… Such is the film of memory. (Etienne Coutinho)
Playwright : Ramu Ramanathan Based on research by : Naresh Fernandes Director : Etienne Coutinho Music Director : Merlin Dsouza Producer : Denzil Smith Asst. Director : Amogh Pant Set Design : Etienne Coutinho Lighting Design : Etienne Coutinho Executive Producer : Blossom Coutinho Backstage : Akanksha Gupta Costumes : Asif Ali Beg Actors : Bugs Bhargava Krishna Rhys Dsouza Supporting Cast: Lionel Pereira Ashley Nazareth Neal Pires Shaukat Baig Clara Pereira Yvette Braganza Anisha Fernandes Annabel Dsilva Ella Atai Lynn D’lima Gopi Kukde Ursula DaCosta
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4th December, 2007 Museum Theatre, 7 pm. Porcelain Solo Dance by Preethi Athreya in collaboration with the music of Tobias Sturmer and the art work of Walter Sturmer. Porcelain – the most refined of all ceramic wares – impervious, translucent, resonant. Porcelain that is brittle and fragile. Harder than steel, white as snow. Porcelain that resists higher temperatures than stone. And porcelain that breaks… Porcelain made with earth and water, dried under the open sky and baked in fire in the presence of air. What better material to symbolise the very substance of our lives? Through the concrete in art, despite the absurd means that produce it, we recognise the abstract. The notion that the stage is a place where the invisible can appear has a strong hold on our thoughts. It is a place where we allow our senses to mingle. We hear the scene, we see the speech. Porcelain is one such world – a place of transformation. Drawing together image, sound and movement, it is the unfolding of an unfamiliar world that derives its coherence from itself and not from any present narrative line. It is a world that resists representation in order to express what is not at all concrete. It is a world, though, that bears witness to the absurd and beautiful frailty of all human endeavour. In Porcelain, images are transformed into light; into habitable spaces defined by the moving body, seeking to draw out their essence. Stone, or porcelain, is transformed into sound, retaining an integral relationship with the material, never seeking to disguise or contort its nature. Playing with shadow and object, with light and darkness, with absence and presence, with sound and silence, with form, shape, texture and colour, the dance reconstitutes all that it encounters, living simultaneously in the body as in the image and in the music. Alive too, in the spectator who must decide the purpose of it all. Porcelain as we see it today, is the outcome of a year-long exchange. It began as a response to the music created by Tobias Sturmer, using the porcelain art objects created by his father, Walter Sturmer, a well-known porcelain sculptor in Munich. As can be said of any conventional notion of the term, our ‘dialogue’ too started with a chat across a table. With a curiosity for the other’s point of view – of the world, of people, food, art and automobiles. A curiosity that has been nurtured and kept alive by a constant encounter with difference – a difference in formulation and expression as much as in thought and feeling. A difference that has invited contemplation and perhaps some playful speculation. When asked ‘Why porcelain?’ Tobias’s reply spoke its own story."My father’s art objects were not originally designed to serve his musician son as interesting instruments. However, I have been able to extract a stunning variety of soundscapes, colours and images from his art work. I scrape porcelain, I roll it, wiggle it, pluck it, hit it, dip it in water, I play it with a bow. I break it. I was intrigued by the idea of patiently and persistently drawing out the voice of a thing like porcelain. I found a parallel in my obsession with dance. I was working to find a language of the body that resisted codification and objectification. My purpose was to restore a sense of self to the body." The initial exploration of material was shown as work in progress in Chennai in March, 2007. Preethi AthreyaMy own work is an attempt at reclaiming the body from the numerous kinds of desensitisation that it is constantly subjected to. Living in an urban metropolis, the constant proximity of bodies in public spaces like queues, buses and often even on the street, brings with it the need to negate one’s own body, to ignore the discomfort of an invasive kind of proximity. Added to this is the commodification of the body on posters, billboards, hoardings and magazines – the perfect body in tailor-made attitudes. Alongside this public ownership of the body is the more subtle, cultural dictates of beauty, humility and propriety. To then get to know one’s own body is a meditative act. A wilful observation and acknowledgement of a particular kind of physicality that you begin to recognise. An unapologetic body – marked as much by what it knows as by what it keeps discovering. Harder than steel, brittle as ceramic. Translucent. A Chennai-based contemporary dancer, Preethi Athreya trained in Bharatanatyam under the Dhananjayans. She holds a post-graduate degree in Dance Studies (Laban Centre, London, 2001). Preethi has been working with well-known choreographer, Padmini Chettur in Chennai since 1999. Her first solo creation, Inhabit (January 2006) was conceived and developed on the idea of the body inhabited by the enormity of the present moment. From her classical dance training, Preethi consciously retains the grounded nature of the body and the connections between thought, emotion and gesture. From her association with the work of Chettur, she brings into her work the ability to identify and isolate a sense of the individual self through a particular usage of bodyline and symmetry. Preethi’s poetry in response to the paintings of Marion Lesage has been published in their collaborative book, L’Inde à fleur d’âmes by Editions La Martinière, Paris (2004). Her review of Belgian choreographer, Michel Laub’s work, Total Masala Slammer was published in the Dance Research Journal, New York, in 2004.
A leading German porcelain artist, Walter Sturmer’s work challenges our perception of porcelain as an industrially manufactured amorphous material – a mass product. Sturmer provokes and enforces all those textures, which the industry aims to suppress – crevices, ruptures and distortions. His sometimes paper-thin sculptures highlight porcelain’s dreamlike transparency. In setting this material free from industrial constraints, he shows its innocence, delicacy and fragility – similar to our human condition which blossoms in fragile beauty once we are free to express our innermost nature to the world.
Three years ago, I started making music with my father’s porcelain. What is the sound of porcelain? Does it sound like clay, like glass or metal? Does it sound bright and fragile or warm and obscure? How do we experience porcelain - a material which our sight and touch are already well familiar with - through listening? Porcelain has a unique sound, indeed. Encouraged by the findings of my first musical experiments, I began to compose and play on my father’s sculptures. Walther was equally enthusiastic about the sounds of these first improvisations. Soon, the two of us started constructing porcelain musical instruments. It is very special for me to be able to share my fascination for this music with my father. Our collaboration is of unique value in my life.In making this music, my approach has turned out to be the same my father’s search: to give expression to the characteristic nature of porcelain. I seek to draw out its voice in every possible way. Porcelain resonates quietly - sometimes the microphones had to be positioned just millimetres away from the object. Porcelain is sonorous, as well as rich in overtones - a characteristic I emphasise through digital editing techniques in order to highlight the material’s astonishing variety of sound. Porcelain is music of the natural elements, its archaic soundscapes evoke images of far away landscapes, of dream worlds and spheres, of twilight, of vastness and of deep silence. In 2006, I released the CD Porzellan Musik, which is the first ever document of Porcelain’s musical possibilities and its tonal complexities. A percussionist, composer and ethnomusicologist, Tobias Sturmer, originally from Germany, has lived and worked in London, Senegal, Venezuela, Dominican Republic and New York. With a Jazz degree from NYC and an MA in Ethnomusicology from SOAS, London University, Tobias Sturmer performs on the London Jazz, Latin Jazz and African music scene. He also runs his own Jazz band and does experimental work with dancers and choreographers. Tobias lives and works in Cologne, Germany. Tobias has been working on porcelain music – music created solely from porcelain art objects created by his father, Walter Sturmer.
Music – Tobias Sturmer Porcelain art – Walter Sturmer Photography – Tobias Sturmer Image editing – Kalaiselvan Lighting – Bhaskar Sound – Pravin/Kalaiselvan Co-Production – Alliance Francaise de Madras Duration: 45 minutes
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5th December, 2007 Museum Theatre, 7 pm. Mistaken…Annie Besant in India A play by the Vayu Naidu Company, U.K. Vayu Naidu Company specially commissioned this play, from an acclaimed playwright, to commemorate the 60th Anniversary of Indian Independence. MISTAKEN… explores the incredible story of an amazing woman’s relationships with India, and the boy who went on to become one of India’s greatest teachers and thinkers, Krishnamurti. Synopsis: 1916: India is simmering with discontent against the Raj. Enter English proto-feminist Annie Besant, notorious at home for unionizing the Bryant and May match-girls, stripped of her children for daring to publish a pamphlet advocating birth control, and rejected by her husband and English society. India offers her a new faith – Theosophy; a new cause – Indian Independence; and a new adopted family – two poor Brahmin brothers, Krishnamurti and Nitya. The boys’ father wants them back, but Annie is determined to proclaim Krishnamurti the new Messiah. Gandhi hails her as the new leader of the Congress Party after she courts imprisonment promoting Indian Home Rule. She admires him - but can the rulers ever befriend the ruled? Can Annie’s great love affair with India last? …or is she mistaken in her beliefs, her adoptions and her causes? Mistaken… features Artistic Director Vayu Naidu as Sidra, the storyteller. It continues Vayu Naidu Company’s Thought Provokes series that focuses on re-thinking history through contemporary storytelling theatre. The production is directed by Chris Banfield, and has been designed by Marsha Roddy with lighting design by Mark Dymock. The cast includes Narinder Samra, Ruby Sahota, Rohit Gokani as Gandhi, and Ranjit Krishnamma with Rosalind Stockwell as Annie. Playwright: Rukhsana Ahmad Director: Chris Banfield Costume Designer: Marsha Roddy Lighting Designer: Mark Dymock Storyteller: Vayu Naidu
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6th December, 2007 Museum Theatre 7 pm. Dhara A dance presentation by Dance Routes Bhubaneshwar showcasing the Raghurajpur Lila Project. Dhara dissolves the conventional demarcations between folk and classical dance in the Orissan performing arts. It weaves together contemporary choreography with the gotipua, sahi yatra and odissi dance traditions, while exploring the process of embodying dance as a means of union with inner divinity, a purpose that historically linked all these forms. Following the success of Dhara in 2006, the troupe of gotipua dancers has been recomposed to take advantage of invitations to perform abroad. One of the prime objectives of the Raghurajpur Lila Project, from which Dhara emerged, was to provide employment to talented gotipua dancers who wished to continue a career in dancing after their life as part of a gurukul drew to a close. With this in mind, Dhara now represents a cross section of senior dancers from different gurukuls who have chosen to become the nucleus of a professional dance company. With their increased skills, the production has evolved, the choreography reshaped and the vision that launched Dhara two years back fully realized. Dhara has an original soundtrack drawing from folk and classical devotional Orissan music and Hindu tantric chants and prayers. It is accompanied by projected images of pattachitra painting (also traditionally a ritual art) with English subtext, illustrating the themes being danced.
Artistic Direction: Dr. Rekha Tandon Music Director: Michael Weston Photography: Robyn Beeche Gotipua dancers: Purnachandra Maharana Purnachandra Jena Bishwanath Jena Chandramani Pradhan
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