Dance for Dance’s Sake

The activities will coalesce into LIVE,a contemporary performance piece meant to deflect conventional notions of a “performance”. Treading the lines of realism and surrealism at the same time,LIVE is part of the second edition of IGNITE! Festival of Contemporary Dance,and will premier in the Capital on November 2. Later, LIVE will also travel to Mumbai,Kolkata,Chennai,Berlin,Dusseldorf,Dhaka and Colombo.

On a nippy Wednesday evening,as the six performers — three Indian and three German — rehearsed for the play,they tried to push the 75-minute-long performance towards one feeling — to ‘live’. “This is a theatre which depends on life,” says one of them,as another slouches and breathes incessantly. The process of inhaling and exhaling,in fact,is the core of the piece.

“Breathing is the most direct contact that the artistes establish with the audience. It’s a problem when people try to understand a piece and not feel it. When I came here,none of the movements of classical dance made sense to me. I couldn’t understand them,and after a while,I gave up and simply enjoyed their beauty. If you allow yourself to go to that level,it’s art,” says Riepe. Johar adds,“Here,it’s an experience that we’re trying to create,not a story or a narrative. It’s a completely abstract concept.”

The project,which came out of three years of dialogue between Johar and Reipe,began when the duo met in 2009. “When a piece is performed on the stage,it’s all plastic and there’s no sense of being in that moment,” says Johar. Riepe chips in,“From the Western side,everything is shown and done already. There’s nothing left to explore. When we met,we started to talk about it. I came to India each year and got to know about Indian culture and art.” The performance was worked upon for six weeks in Germany and six weeks in India.

LIVE will be performed at Sri Ram Centre on November 2 at 8.30 pm. For tickets,log on to http://www.bookmyshow.com