Hot Stepper

The artist,who didn’t succumb to Bollywood choreography despite having many options,doesn’t regret “jhatka matkas,all the same moves”. Instead,Deboo has devoted the last two decades to working with physically impaired children,so Breaking Boundaries was a new challenge for him. “I wanted to show the audience how performers discovered movement,maneuvering themselves in a limited space,” he says,adding that he took on this production since he had wound up his work with students of the Clarke School of Deaf,Chennai.

The troupe of 14 performers,between the ages of 13 and 24,were children living on the street,with no previous exposure to dance or rhythm. “These children have always seen Hrithik Roshan or Salman Khan gyrating in films. In a span of four months I had to make them discover their bodies and teach them the vocabulary of movement. I had to make them understand that abstract movement also means dance,” says Deboo,who selected 14 from a group of 20 volunteers. The 70-minute dance performance had five choreographed pieces,exploring the evolution of life.

A combination of abstract and eerily slow movements,interspersed with some athletic cart wheels,the performance was flawless.

Deboo also performed a 16-minute solo towards the end,in a piece titled ‘Bhakti’. “I could not weave a story in such a short span of time. Usually I work with children for nine months to give birth to a piece,” he said,recalling his production,Contraposition,with the girls of the Clarke School of the Deaf in 2004.