Meghna Bhardwaj’s Edges (Beginnings) at FACETSBiennial 2017 Magali Couffon

At the Attakkalari India Biennial 2017, we were presented a broad range of contemporary dance performances. The following two works stood out to me as endeavours to create an experience of dance that provides the viewer, in an unusual manner, with the choice of accepting or rejecting the interpretation of the choreographer.

At the FACETS Choreography Residency showcase, Meghna Bhardwaj’s Edges (Beginnings) wove a precise serenity into itself. In her introduction, she says she drew inspiration from the work of musical artist Jan Eerala. Those familiar with the serenity of the soundscape in Eerala’s works will easily find the link between the two. The uninitiated have to watch for Meghna’s careful movements so that each limb, each crevice, each edge of her body emerges as an intentional and controlled exercise in seeking what still exists around us.

Meghna’s piece begins with her balancing on the ground, using her shoulders to support the rest of her body, her legs up in the air and her back, towards the audience. With this opening to her work, she creates an image that is instantly familiar yet fresh. Slowly, we are drawn into the physical exploration of her quest to find the edges of her body and in turn the edges of her internal scape, too. Soon after the piece begins, we forget the body’s brilliant ability to move and create images, which is the intent of the dancer. In Meghna’s work, it isn’t the virtuosic body that is showcased but rather a body in motion, pushing itself to seek answers. The answers seem to be to questions around training and the dancer’s own understanding of quietness.

In Tordre (Wrought), Annie Hanauer seems to have found the answers to some of these questions, too. Her pirouetting engenders the same meditative involvement achieved by monks observing stillness. In this Centre Stage work, choreographed by Rachid Ouramdane, dancers Annie Hanauer and Lora Juodkaite perform a work that reads as two solos in the same space. While Lora explores the space in sharp lines and expansive movements, Annie employs circularity as her mode of being in the space. Her constant pirouetting seems to swallow the whole stage but also the struggles and inquiries of the performance. Tordre begins and ends with upbeat music, and the movements corresponding with this soundscape remind us of happier times when we would have accepted the fatality of life, as it were. 

For some of us in the Writing on Dance Laboratory, neither of these dance pieces may have impressed in the physicality of their movement or their presentation skills. But I see these dance works as a good exercise for audiences to perceive familiar movement expressed in unfamiliar ways. For example, ‘circularity’ in dance is an essential element of many forms of dance (from the whirling dervishes of Egypt to Garba dancers of Gujarat) and is employed as a hypnotic and meditative tool. So the evolution of modern dance vocabulary could be an invitation to post-humanist interpretations. 

In Bhardwaj’s work, I could see the ‘beginning’ it its true sense of her developing and enhancing her quest, in thought and in moving beyond the physicality of dance. Her work allowed me to understand a genuine search for the sources of anguish and pain through her body. Her work became more than good body movement in its willingness to go to fetch answers. 

In Annie’s pirouettes, I saw the certainty of answers. Her movements, for me, work towards testing a hypothesis that experience influences smoothness. I’ve come to read this quality of continuous and steady harmony as a testament to the maturing journey of the performer. Her dance reads to me as representational in terms of the visualisation of the character’s internal struggles but experiential in terms of the kinaesthetic affect. 

In the end, Meghna’s work with its crescendo and collage of images is an exploration of nature, of life. While the same could be said of Annie’s solo in Tordre, the simplicity of her images and the internalisation of the movements make the larger piece art rather than quest. To appreciate these kinds of works requires the audience to be patient, accepting of searching for meaning in the body and in narrative. Sometimes, they will have to look elsewhere, too.