City teenagers celebrate life through dance and paintings

The workshop 'Teenage Times Remix Kolkata' was organised by ThinkArts (India) and Curious Seed of Scotland and supported by British Council India and British Council Scotland.

The workshop was conducted by a Scottish choreographer Christine Devaney and two dancers from the Gaelic country on Friday.

Devaney told PTI "we asked the participants to draw self-portrait among other things. We also asked them to express how they feel about themselves and their lives."

She said the 'Teenage Times Remix Kolkata' was initiated at the Edinburgh Music Festival in the past when ThinkArts representatives "saw some of our works."

Asked about the similarities faced by teenagers of two countries, she said, "They are under the same pressure of examinaton and pressure to think about future".

Ruchira Das from ThinkArts said, "After Devaney had conducted a five-day workshop in October 2017 here in smaller form with teenagers, dancers, visual artistes, we applied for fund from British Council and the Teenage Times Remix Kolkata 2018 came off."

"It is a residency programme where the performances have been devised entirely by the teenagers. They are celebrating teenage through dance," Das said.

"We now intend to take the programme to different schools," she said.

Devaney said the performances of the teenagers at the workshop at a city school, where they talked, danced and drew self-portraits in colours, had been filmed and would be posted in a video sharing website.

Director, British Council (East) Debanjan Chakrabarti said, "we are delighted with this collaboration between ThinkArts and Curious Seed. This year, as we celebrate 70 years of the British Council in India, we hope this Scotland-India collaboration will inspire young people in both countries to know each other better."