Scene from Hari Krishnan’s Quicksand
Everyone loves a second look; a chance to come at something from a different angle and turn an idea on its head. And choreographer Hari Krishnan does just that. Krishnan is the artistic director of inDance and creator of Quicksand and Nine, two contemporary and classical Indian dance creations, which offer us two divergent interpretations of the same theme This engaging, large-scale ensemble performance runs from April 12-14th at the Fleck Theatre in the Harbourfront Centre and features 20 Toronto-based dancers.
Both Quicksand and Nine are centered on navarasa, the nine archetypal emotions of classical Indian dance: love, disgust, compassion, valour, humour, fear, wonder, anger, and peace. Krishnan’s aim is to take these nine emotions central to bharatanatyam, largely popular form of classical Indian dance, and subvert tradition in order to create something new. With an all-male cast of nine, bare-chested dancers, and a series of props ranging from heart shaped helium balloons and garbage bags to four inch red heels and a giant framed photo of Mother Teresa, Krishnan takes creative and theatrical risks in order to prove his point. Using his sense of humour and the supple dexterity of his dancers, he gives the hyper-theatrical representations of these emotions in the classical form a contemporary and critical twist.
In Quicksand, Krishnan fuses gestural and postural elements of bharatanatyam’s classical repertoire with contemporary dance to enact his acute satire of this ancient dance form. Krishnan’s choreography systematically questions sexuality, conformity, identity and self-expression. Highly physical, the men twist and lurch with virtuosity and precision, always referencing the classical form at the base of the work with the delicate and precise positioning of their hands and their open-chested stance.
Quicksand’s dramatic highlight occurs suddenly when the ensemble of men sit with their legs dangling over the edge of the stage and put on lipstick as male dancer Jelani Ade-Lam struts down a catwalk of light in four inch red heels to a pop montage featuring Britney Spears, Madonna, Justin Bieber and more. The rest of the cast sits staring at the audience expectantly, hilariously exaggerated expressions spreading across their faces in unison as the group of men serve as a Greek chorus to Lam’s runway escapades.
Not only does Krishnan blatantly subvert the traditional norms of the bharatanatyam form in Quicksand, but he clearly has fun doing it.
Apart from quirky props and clever dramatic moments, the overall experience of Quicksand is akin to watching a structured movement analysis of the limitations of what Krishnan calls the “hyper-melodramatic” nature of the classical Indian form. Like an essay, the effect is highly informative rather than transformative, an analysis of traditional cultural norms through contemporary movement.
Nine on the other hand, with nine women and one man in traditional dress full of bright colours and accents of gold, is a contemporary staging of pure traditional bharatanatyam repetoire. The dancers perform in unison in individual squares of light forming a chorus of movement and sound as soloists highlight each of the nine emotions in sequence. In Nine, Krishnan resurrects the very form he satirizes in Quicksand. While the 10 male dancers in Quicksand give us an athletic and technical performance, flashing their ironic forced smiles, Nine offers something very different: embodied emotion and authenticity on stage.
In Quicksand and Nine, each approach reveals what the other lacks: embodied performance versus intellectual satire. In so doing, Krishnan honours the very form he deconstructs, reveling in the very movements and attitudes he questions, in this destabilizing comment on the evolution of dance. In the end, Krishnan leaves it to the audience to draw their own conclusions on where the value lies.
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Quicksand & Nine
inDance
April 12-14, 8pm
Fleck Dance Theatre
Harbourfront Centre
231 Queens Quay West, Toronto
For tickets call: 416 973-4000 or visit www.tickets.harbourfrontcentre.com
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