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Indian dance: a rare look at the diaspora
by Robert Johnson/The Star-Ledger
Thursday August 14, 2008, 5:03 PM
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Erasing Borders: Festival of Indian Dance. Where and when: Noon Monday-Tuesday outdoors at Chase Manhattan Plaza, corner of Liberty and Nassau Streets, New York. Free. Where and when: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday-Thursday, Ailey Citigroup Theater, 405 W. 55th St. at Ninth Avenue, New York. How much: $35; $25 students. Call (212) 594-3685 or visit iaac.us
NEW YORK - Billed as a festival of Indian dance, the performances, lectures and panel discussions that the Indo-American Arts Council will present next week add up to a bit more than that.
This dance festival is titled "Erasing Borders," and the first fence it means to tear down is the one excluding artists who live and work outside India in the far-flung Indian diaspora of modern times.
Like the Indo-American Arts Council itself, many of the dancers and choreographers who will perform here have hyphenated identities. They are flying in from Chicago, Minneapolis and Washington D.C.; from Montreal and London. Some of them were born in India, while others are second-generation immigrants. For "Erasing Borders," 15 ensembles will perform out of doors at two free events sponsored by the Downtown Dance Festival and will give a pair of formal concerts in the Ailey Citigroup Theater.
"We wanted to showcase what diaspora artists are doing," says festival director Prachi Dalal, who has co-curated the events with choreographer and dance scholar Uttara Asha Coorlawalla. "We also wanted to see what kind of stories they tell, versus the ones that are coming from India and what kind of collaborations they are creating with artists from India."
Some of the performers are masters of time-honored, classical dance styles like Kathak, Odissi, and Bharata Natyam. But festival audiences should not count on reassuring affirmations of "Indian-ness." The dances that Alexandria, Va.-based artist Janaki Rangarajan will perform in praise of the Hindu deities, for example, reflect a subtle reinterpretation of Bharata Natyam based on her own fresh study of temple sculptures. Sudarshan Belsare, of Boston, is a transgender artist who portrays the loves and spiritual yearnings of classic heroines.
Then there are the moderns - choreographers with political agendas, like Ananya Chatterjea, of Minneapolis, who makes dances like "Daak, Call to Action," concerned with environmental justice and land rights; or Anurekha Ghosh, from Birmingham, UK, whose piece "Noor/LIGHT," combines Kathak with acrobatics and multi-media.
"It's not just about ethnicity, but it's also about where you would like to take the dance," Dalal says. "A lot of older Indian dance teachers may not necessarily approve of that, and that's another boundary that dancers are struggling to break down.
"The older generation artists were so concerned about losing their tradition that they were very careful about holding on, and as a result it became puritanical. The new generation coming up. They're trying to make it more relevant to today's times."
Dalal says she hopes young people will attend these concerts, attracted by the prospect of seeing their realities on stage. The director also hopes the cross-over artists showcased in "Erasing Borders" will appeal to non-Indian dance audiences, initiating dialogue and breaking down yet another wall that can make Indian dance concerts the province of homesick Indian expatriates.
"We're saying that Indian dance is something that is relevant not only to the South Asian diaspora here, but across the board."
Robert Johnson may be reached at rjohnson@starledger.com.
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http://www.nj.com/entertainment/arts/index.ssf/2008/08/indian_dance_a_rare_look_at_th.html
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