Bharatnatyam comes to Mumbai in a global mould

On Sunday evening, leading UK-based dancer-choreographer Shobana Jeyasingh will stage two of her productions at the NCPA  — Faultline and Bruise Blood — both of which fuse Bharatanatyam with western dance styles.

Before she founded the Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company in the UK in 1988, Jeyasingh says she underwent a period of both doubt and immense transformation. “I loved Bharatanatyam. But looking at my own videos made me cringe. My dance was a beautiful historical rendition, but where were my stories in them? There was no room because my stories were contemporary. I wanted to speak of the life in UK.”

Jeyasingh began searching for a way to fit abstract qualities of dance and space and time, and find a way for the body to move in a way that was more relevant to her life and times then. Today, her dance company has dancers from across the world, which Jeyasingh believes makes her dance form truly eclectic.

Jeyasingh’s fascination with the depiction of global issues and contemporary lifestyle in her dance is clearly seen in her productions. Faultline (2007) was inspired by the anxiety amongst Asian men in the UK after the London bombings.  “The unease and the identity crisis was so palpable... my Asian dancers were often stopped and interrogated by cops on the streets. “ Faultline was also partly inspired by Londonstani, a novel by Gautam Malkani that speaks of young Asian men in southwest London.

Bruise Blood, Jeyasingh’s second production that will be staged tonight, is inspired by the minimalist music of American composer Steve Reich. British beatboxer Shlomo and Jeyasingh mixed the piece with composer Glyn Perrin.

Jeyasingh says she finds the ‘East versus West’ tag irritating. “It almost means that you can have one only without the other — which is rubbish. Who says Vedic maths will be diluted if you introduce, say, a Greek concept to it? Or you can do yoga and not practice any other form of fitness by the side?”

In her future works, Jeyasingh hopes to explore the effect of the explosion of digital technology on the creative process of dance.