Duration: 00:12:50; Aspect Ratio: 1.778:1; Hue: 76.519; Saturation: 0.025; Lightness: 0.673; Volume: 0.227; Cuts per Minute: 0.545
Summary: The Gati Summer Dance Residency 2012 offered five emerging choreographers an opportunity to work with experienced mentors in the field of dance, theatre and sound design. It was held in New Delhi, from 21st April to 22nd June 2012. During the nine weeks, the residents developed their own individual choreographic works. The resident choreographers came from multifarious performance backgrounds including Contemporary dance, Kathak, Manipuri, Bharatanatyam as well as Theatre. This year's residents were Divya Vibha Sharma (Bombay), Rakesh Mps (Bangalore), Sanjukta Wagh (Bombay), Debanjali Biswas (Kolkata) and Sunitha (Bangalore). The mentors were theatre director Sankar Venketeshwaran from Kerala, German choreographers Susanne Linke and Urs Dietrich, and Swiss sound artist POL. The Residency concluded with the final showcase of the residents' works on 21st and 22nd June 2012, at Sri Ram Centre, New Delhi.
Arushi Singh’s research was analyzing the choreographic process of each dancer at this year’s Residency. It involved intensively documenting each mentor’s class and rehearsal process of the residents, supported with continued conversations with the residents and mentors. It has led her to shed light on the choreographic journey of each resident including their pre-expressivities, the preliminary ideas for the piece they wanted to develop, the process of developing their movement vocabulary which moved in and out of methods that they already were trained in as well as those they inculcated from collaborative work with mentors and fellow residents, to the very end of finalizing their pieces by engaging in other aspects of their performance such as props and sound.
Sanjukta’s story is one that depicts a cyclical evolution in a dancer’s journey, to make the dance she does, her own. She is originally trained in Kathak, under Guru Rajashree Shirke. While working as a professional performer and choreographer of Kathak, Sanjukta felt an estrangement with the form’s bounded nature. However, when she went to Trinity Laban School in London for a year to learn Contemporary dance, she saw how Kathak was being distorted into a ‘costumed’ version. From thereon, she took it upon herself to reconnect with and rediscover Kathak, all over again.
body awareness
breathing technique
GSDR 2012
Khirki Studios
New Delhi
Susanna Linke
Susanne Linke worked on the technique of developing expression that is ‘of one’s own body’. The exercises that she did were for residents to develop an awareness of everything from inside to the outside. The exercise of stretching the hands out on both sides was to expand the energy out, such that one can feel the space around, at the same time the breathing causes going inwards. Outside includes how space is conceived around you, and inside involves becoming aware of one’s abdominal center by doing the exercise repetitively. Breathing is organic and therefore its influence on movement is to generate a physically organic way of moving. In other words, her methodology is based on stretching everything—as she remarks- “ stretch what you have and at least what you are.”
Urs Dietrich
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