Finding your own form
25 Jun 2012 12:29 AM GMT
If you are a dancer who always wanted to create your own work, if you seek to discover a personal dance language, if you are trained in a form and want to experiment and if you wish to explore the space between dance and other dance disciplines, then Gati Summer Dance Residency (GSDR) is for you.
GSDR is an annual 10-week residency that provides emerging dance choreographers in India with an opportunity to create and stage their own performance.
‘There is a selection team which follows stringent rules to select and pick the dancers across the country. We do that by looking into their respective works and then select,’ says an official from GSDR.
‘Applications are invited from choreographers or dancers working in the classical or contemporary dance fields to submit an idea for a new choreographic work,’ the official added.
GSDR supports selected residents with feedback and assistance from established mentors. A mentor here improvises on their current dance form and introduces other perspectives during the choreographic process of the residents.
The residency also provides each choreographer with financial support, accommodation, individual mentoring, workshop experience, rehearsal space and production assistance.
This year’s residents are Divya Vibha Sharma (Delhi), Rakesh MPS (Bangalore), Sanjukta Wagh (Mumbai), Sunitha (Bangalore) and Debanjali Biswas (Kolkata). They are being mentored under theatre director Sankar Venkateswaran, German choreographers Susanne Linke and Urs Dietrich and Swiss sound artist POL.
Susanna Linke from Germany is an internationally renowned choreographer who headed the Folkwang Tanz Studio. In 1994, together with her partner Urs Dietrich as co-director, she created a new company at the Bremen Theater in 1994.
‘The special focus of this year’s residency is sound design. The residents have worked intensively in collaboration with a sound mentor, POL to create their own sound scores,’ Susanna pointed out.
Dancer, choreographer and teacher, Sanjukta Wagh hailing from Mumbai presented a dance form titled Putana and I. ‘ The dance denotes a churning of emotions, images, ideas, feelings occurs on encountering Putana. Putana is the woman who is at once creative and destructive,’ Wagh explained.
Divya Vibha Sharma aka Chamko Rani from Delhi is a performer, dance maker and children’s book illustrator who has no fixed home and no fixed job. She spends four months in Goa engaging with movement, contact improvisation, drawing, meditation and Tai Chi.
She is trained in Kalaripayyatu, contemporary and Bharatanatyam at the Attakkalari Centre for Movement, Bangalore. ‘Peace of Plastic is the name of my work which attempts to explore the absurdity that surrounds money with a little help from an old Irish folktale,’ she says.
A freelance performer, teacher and choreographer from Bangalore, Rakesh MPS started his career as a Bollywood dancer. Contemporary dance became his core interest later. He joined Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts, Bangalore in 2003.
‘The name of my piece is A Dream of Silence which is based on the conflict of the self with the outside and is not just at a superficial level. I believe it impacts the collective consciousness,’ Rakesh explained.
Gati Summer Dance Residency 2012 would showcase choreographers mastered in contemporary dance forms mainly to enhance creativity and innovation in Indian dance and to derive the required visibility.
GSDR is an annual 10-week residency that provides emerging dance choreographers in India with an opportunity to create and stage their own performance.
‘There is a selection team which follows stringent rules to select and pick the dancers across the country. We do that by looking into their respective works and then select,’ says an official from GSDR.
‘Applications are invited from choreographers or dancers working in the classical or contemporary dance fields to submit an idea for a new choreographic work,’ the official added.
GSDR supports selected residents with feedback and assistance from established mentors. A mentor here improvises on their current dance form and introduces other perspectives during the choreographic process of the residents.
The residency also provides each choreographer with financial support, accommodation, individual mentoring, workshop experience, rehearsal space and production assistance.
This year’s residents are Divya Vibha Sharma (Delhi), Rakesh MPS (Bangalore), Sanjukta Wagh (Mumbai), Sunitha (Bangalore) and Debanjali Biswas (Kolkata). They are being mentored under theatre director Sankar Venkateswaran, German choreographers Susanne Linke and Urs Dietrich and Swiss sound artist POL.
Susanna Linke from Germany is an internationally renowned choreographer who headed the Folkwang Tanz Studio. In 1994, together with her partner Urs Dietrich as co-director, she created a new company at the Bremen Theater in 1994.
‘The special focus of this year’s residency is sound design. The residents have worked intensively in collaboration with a sound mentor, POL to create their own sound scores,’ Susanna pointed out.
Dancer, choreographer and teacher, Sanjukta Wagh hailing from Mumbai presented a dance form titled Putana and I. ‘ The dance denotes a churning of emotions, images, ideas, feelings occurs on encountering Putana. Putana is the woman who is at once creative and destructive,’ Wagh explained.
Divya Vibha Sharma aka Chamko Rani from Delhi is a performer, dance maker and children’s book illustrator who has no fixed home and no fixed job. She spends four months in Goa engaging with movement, contact improvisation, drawing, meditation and Tai Chi.
She is trained in Kalaripayyatu, contemporary and Bharatanatyam at the Attakkalari Centre for Movement, Bangalore. ‘Peace of Plastic is the name of my work which attempts to explore the absurdity that surrounds money with a little help from an old Irish folktale,’ she says.
A freelance performer, teacher and choreographer from Bangalore, Rakesh MPS started his career as a Bollywood dancer. Contemporary dance became his core interest later. He joined Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts, Bangalore in 2003.
‘The name of my piece is A Dream of Silence which is based on the conflict of the self with the outside and is not just at a superficial level. I believe it impacts the collective consciousness,’ Rakesh explained.
Gati Summer Dance Residency 2012 would showcase choreographers mastered in contemporary dance forms mainly to enhance creativity and innovation in Indian dance and to derive the required visibility.
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