‘Tanashah is symbolic of the times we live in’: Navtej Johar’s solo comes to Chandigarh
Navtej Johar's solo is based on the jail diaries of Bhagat Singh, particularly his essay entitled ‘Why I am an Atheist'
3 min read
A Sangeet Natak Akademi award-winning Bharatnatyam exponent and choreographer, Navtej Johar after receiving training at Kalakshetra, studied at the Department of Performance Studies, New York University. (Express photo) Navtej Johar returns home to Chandigarh to present ‘Tanashah’, a solo based on the jail diaries of Bhagat Singh, particularly his essay entitled ‘Why I am an Atheist’. The production, here on the invitation of Elsewhere, explores extremes.
Based on the jail diaries of Bhagat Singh, particularly his essay entitled, ‘Why I am an Atheist’, it examines the resolve of a young man to walk to the gallows with searing clarity, un-sublimated by religious doctrine or idealist philosophy. A Sangeet Natak Akademi award-winning Bharatnatyam exponent and choreographer, Johar after receiving training at Kalakshetra, studied at the Department of Performance Studies, New York University.
Tanashah, says Johar, was made in 2018, for the Serendipity festival, and it was brewing in his mind for a while. The dancer had stopped dancing around 2013-14 as the performer in him was looking for something and he began reading the diaries of Bhagat Singh. “There are so many ways that I could identify with him, he came from my part of the world, a Sikh, from a religious family, a believer as a child and slowly turned into an atheist. It resonated with my own personal journey, my politics, sentiments and our stories intertwined at many points. Also, in the last few years, he was proclaimed by the Hindu right. But he was a communist and I wanted to set the record straight. For me, he’s a poet, the way he writes and thinks and then a revolutionary. So these things contributed to picking the text, though I am not trained in using text. I wanted to find a medium that was appropriate to what I wanted to say. I needed words and conversations and that’s why I chose this. The title is part of a text and it is symbolic of the times we live in,” adds Johar, who draws upon the young revolutionary’s love for poetry and song.
Johar began with GS Chani’s theatre group in college here and got bored of it because he thought theatre involved a lot of talking and his body was too full of expression. He remembers writing in his diary, “I’m dropping theatre because it’s too verbose”.
With Tanashah, Johar is back to it. “Now I also have a body which knows how to handle the gaps and text also has gaps. First, I had to edit it and then memorise it. Then I started combining it with imagery and sounds and my own monologues, so it was like making a collage of texts, moments, sounds and images that never ends and one keeps juggling.”
Art, adds the dancer, is an intervention, expression and if art is not political, then it is conformist. “If you are presenting your body on stage, it is a political stance. You cannot be not political. A Sikh, male Bharatanatyam, gay dancer is itself a political act,” says Johar.
Tanashah will be staged on October 28, at Mini Tagore Theatre, Sector 18, at 6.45 pm.
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