Spaces of Performance

By Devika K

After Chennai, people say that Bangalore is a dancer’s heaven. Unlike Chennai which has been since ages a culturally viable and traditionally moulded space for dancers, Bangalore is an experimenter’s abode. With multitudinous dance intuitions and dancers within the cityscape, Bangalore becomes a space for artists to explore their art form; to let them merge contemporary with Bharatanatyam, Navarasa and visual poetry, social issue and traditional repertoire. 

Rukmini Vijayakumar, a Bangalore based Bharatanatyam artist, is well known for pushing the boundaries when it comes to creative expression within the ancient dance form. Be it in her minimal or character regulated attire, experimental themes or genre of music or mixing of contemporary and yoga into the movements, Rukmini has never failed to leave the audience in awe through her performance. In Talattu her latest solo dance production, she goes on to explore the emotional nuances of the two women in Krishna’s life – Yashoda and Radha. While the narrative around Krishna is recurrent, Rukmini shifts the limelight to the female characters and takes the spectators on an emotional journey that follow the two female character post their separation with Krishna. While the novel narrative and the breathtaking abhinaya Rukmini showcases leaves one in tears, the highlight of the whole production was the music. Slow paced, emotionally deep and experimented with Western instruments, the music struck the right chords with each step and bhava.

Having watched the performance in two different spaces, I must admit that the space (the city too) and the nature of the stage has significant influence on the reception of the art. The first one staged in Jagriti in Whitefield had an entirely different sort of feel when compared to the one in Shoonya near Lal Bagh. Jagriti’s construction is such that the seats are arranged in a semi circular manner around a full thrust stage. While the theatre like structure makes the performer accessible to the audience there is a sense of formal relation associated with the space; a distance between the audience and the performer. Shoonya on the other hand is an informal performing space with no constructed higher platform or seats. Sitting on the ground and watching someone perform at the same level as you is not just reminiscent of the old times but increases the connect one has with the performer. The fourth wall does not literally exists here, be it even for a traditional dance performance. In an interview Rukmini gave to Indian Express she says that “Every entrance, every walk around the coming up or going down conveys a certain message. This is what we use all the time to convey all our messages. We use it for everything. We have only our bodies, we don’t have our voice in dance. Dance is not a space that houses the mind and spirit. Architecture houses a space, it is a physical construct that houses the human body.” The importance of a space at large in dance may not be as relevant  to the performer when compared to her body, mind and spirit but for the spectator the space constructs a varietal perception of even the same movement. The Yashoda who sits on the floor and weeps at the separation of her son is a different spectacle when viewed at our eyes’ level and at a lower level. The space of the city at large is also influential to the performer as it opens up such creative spaces literally and metaphorically where a traditional art form can be taken out of its archaic repertoire.