13.2.17 Monday
Today was a long but exciting day. We all met in our designated studio at 9 am (early start!) This itself was a challenge as many people found it difficult or even unreasonable to start so early! This changed however as we progressed into the work for our project and realised that we needed to start early in order to get a lot of work done! As project leader, I had to maintain discipline yet not seem rude and this was being tricky from day one itself!
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| Entering the Laban building early morning on day one! What a start! |
I was slightly nervous but still assured about leading the project. I was relying on the communication the group had established before the actual start of CoLab for smooth functioning. After introducing ourselves to each other, I introduced the project idea and spoke briefly about Kathak and Steve Reich. Then we split and the musicians went off to our breakout space to practice Clapping Music.
I gave the dancers their dancing bells and excitement spread in the studio. The dancers were so intrigued. I helped them fasten their own mini-bells and wore my own bells.
I also had to tell them specifically to take their socks off as contemporary dancers always wear socks but kathak is danced barefoot!
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| Tying the ghungroos (dancing bells) |
Barefoot with the anklets tied securely, the dancers were ready to learn kathak.
I showed the main pose of kathak-upright with mudras in both hands and elbows pointing outwards.
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| The main pose of kathak |
Then, I introduced the foot-taps. "Lift your foot slightly from the back as if youre gently kicking sand but dont kick it- just grip the floor instead." That was how I explained the foot-tap.
I introduced the main types of foot-taps- flat foot, heel and ball of the foot.
I let the dancers practice in the studio and went to look at what the musicians had done. Most of them had managed to master the rhythms. However some were finding them particularly difficult. These musicians were being tutored by the others and they were practising in pairs.
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| Musicians practicing Clapping Music |
After lunch, I taught the dancers hand-movements while the musicians busied themselves with planning how to arrange Clapping Music for their instruments. The dancers found the hand-movements pretty easy. However, when combined with the bending in torso and neck, they began to see how difficult Kathak can get!
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| Me teaching the dancers hand-movements |
The entire group then sat in one room and discussed how to choreograph clapping music. Dancers had ideas of hand-body percussion as well. Musicians had their own ideas. Frankly, I thought there were too many ideas in the pot and no flame to cook the soup! But I let the dancers and musicians experiment and helped to direct the experiments.
By the end of the day, we had prepared a very rough sort of arrangement. There was contemporary dance fused with kathak, hand-body percussion, foot-tapping and music. We performed this for our mentor, Sara.
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| Group discussion with dance mentor Sara |
Sara rightly pointed out that we needed to sort our ideas. She also warned us to look at the title of the project and question the authenticity of what we were doing. She suggested, "If I come to a project titled Kathak meets Steve reich, I want to see Kathak- lot's of it." She also told the dancers how they must respect kathak and it's tradition. It is a ance form that needs years of mastery and precision is important. I seconded her- Kathak looks straight forward but it had taken me 8 years to perform in public! The group agreed. It was a compeltely valid suggestion. We were exhausted with the day but we thanked Sara and vowed to focus more on pure kathak.
We also found out the our music mentor Paul Newland was severely ill and perhaps would not be able to attend any CoLab!
We all went home leaving behind mistakes , taking back with us lessons learnt from them and preparing for challenges.
