Poetry in motionThe falling leaves drift by my bedroom window adding a new meaning to all the literature and lyrics I have ever read or heard these past three decades of my life. It's an amazing experience to live through seasons that one has grown up eulogising through one's formal and informal education, yet never having the opportunity to witness in India's tropical climate. The tropics have their benefit no doubt: the steady non-challenging climes of Bombay - if it's June 10, it must be the start of the monsoons. If it's Holi it must be the start of summer. Subtle changes that invoke comfort, nay, inertia. Now, here I am in New York living through defined seasons of extremes. Every day the reality of winter dawns closer, and as the leaves change hues to rust tones and fall one by one in O Henry simplicity, I look into shop windows and eye the long Armani overcoat that will one day metamorph from a luxury item into a necessary rag.Dancing dervishIn such an environment it was niceto meet with old friend and kindred spirit Astaad Deboo from the Juicy Mango (for if New York is the Big Apple then Shobha De was spot on in naming Mumbai the Juicy Mango). Astaad is in the throes of winding up another successful world tour, this time taking in Mexico, Venezuela, Argentina and Cuba. We met at the plush home of Citi banker Roy Sinai and Astaad is animated and excited as he recalls the amazing reaction and excessive praise he received for `Celebration'. Mumbaikars will recall that Astaad had teamed up with some exceptional talents from Manipur who practice the almost lost martial arts called Thang-ta and created a ballet of energetic proportions. Picked up by the ICCR, which thankfully from time to time recognises modern dance performance and helps promote it on a world stage, Deboo's ensemble first shook a leg at New York's famed Thaliya Theatre Complex. Then they proceeded to the Cerrvantino Annual Arts Festival in Gaujanato, Mexico where an audience of over 2,000 applauded them under astarlit sky. A bus ride later they had another Terpsichorean date at the San Miguel Allende Festival staged at a baroque opera hall. And so our desi Nijinsky wowed the descendants of Alzahoepa at opulent venues in Celaya, Mexico City, Merida, Buenos Aires, etc. "It was great to meet an enthusiastic and informed audience who were invigorated to know that mystic India was alive to experimentation and contemporaneous culture," beamed Deboo.He then parted paths with the Hula Group of martial artistes and went for a solo tour of Castro land where he gave six sold-out performances in Havana and Pena Del Mar. And while he didn't meet the old dog revolutionary (and great friend of India, enemy number three of America) Astaad had the singular privilege of meeting one of the legendary names of Modern Dance, Alicia Alonzo. This grande dame of movement, now in her nineties and totally blind, made a special mission backstage to bless Deboo. They chit-chatted about the state of Modern Dance and she recalled Deboo'spioneering works, including his soulful choreography for another legendary performer, the late Russian diva, Maya Pilsketskya. "Havana is one of the most beautiful cities I have ever been to," says Deboo, who in his lifetime has travelled to almost every corner of the world, "but sadly it is in near ruin as the Cuban economy struggles to stay afloat. You can tell even now what a paradise this city must have been in its hey-day." Much like Mumbai, I wistfully think, before greed, corruption, fascism and over-population crippled it irrevocably.Same-sex fusionAnother Indian dancer of noted repute also performed in New York last week, alas to poor reviews. Chandralekha (she of the stylised shocking white hair, charcoal eyes and red dot) performed her bizarre piece called `Raga: In Search Of Femininity' at the Next Wave Festival (Brooklyn Academy Of Music).This ballet deals with the progressive concept of androgyny of the human spirit, the ancient concept of Ardhnyarishwara. Alas the 90-minute balletis bathetic and frankly ludicrous. While Chandralekha seems genuinely interested in the philosophy of dual sexuality of the human spirit (a noble thought) she is at pains to masterfully translate it through the medium of dance. Her troupe had some sadly amateur performers and her choreography consisted of rather simple yogic asanas and rudimentary calisthenics. At points her visual construct of same-sex fusion took absurdly clumsy, self-conscious forms invoking guffaws from the audience. Anna Kisselgoff, reviewer for the New York Times, panned the ballet and noted: ". (the dancers) are often kept to the floor as they arch in sphinxlike poses or bounce along the floor in a push-up position. That one man hugs the knee of another may suggest that every part of the human body is worth adoration from a lover, but when one man hugs the other's rump, poetry no longer hovers in the air!"Yesterday, once morePoetry is ripe in Todd Haynes new film Velvet Goldmine that traces the birth and eventualcommercialisation of Glam-rock. While the film will never make it to a theatre near you (sadly!) I advise a quick rush to your nearest Shemaroo to book it. I saw the film with '70s child Brian Desouza (now a big commercial fashion designer in the US) who, along with his fabulous sister (and one-time ace model) Marion, was part of Bombay's Glam-rock scene. It was a time when Jesus Christ Superstar hit this city and spawned an urban youth culture that the Channel [V] kids of the '90s have much to be thankful for. With news that the Lloyd-Webber musical is being revived by Rahul daCunha one can only smile and think how yesterday's freaks are today's heroes - so concludes this freak, wisely.Riyad Wadia, avant garde film-maker, is currently at home in New York.
