The Parrot’s Tale

The Parrot’s Tale

Once there was a parrot. It was an illiterate parrot. It sang its heart out, and did not read the shaastras. It pranced about, revelled in flight, and had absolutely no idea about social etiquette.
The king said, ‘ such a bird serves no useful purpose at all. On the other hand, it eats up all the wild berries of the forest, and hence hampers the fruit trade in the royal market.’
So the king summoned the prime minister and ordered, ‘educate that bird!’.

2

The king’s nephews were entrusted with the task of educating the bird.
The wise men of the kingdom sat and deliberated at length as to why the bird was so utterly barbaric, without any trace of civilization.
Their verdict was unanimous - the nest that the bird had built out of mere straw and twigs was incapable of containing much learning. Therefore the first priority was to construct a properly satisfactory cage.
This was a most welcome verdict, and the wise men happily departed with their fat pay-cheques.

3

The goldsmith was summoned to make the golden cage. The cage he made was such a marvel, that people came from far and wide to catch a glimpse of it. Some said, ‘this is the very acme of learning’. Others said, ‘whether any learning happens or not does not matter, but oh what a cage it is! How fortunate the bird is!’
The goldsmith’s money-purse was filled to the brim, and he immediately set off homewards with a fat smile on his lips.
The professors then set about trying to educate the bird. Inhaling deeply from their snuff-boxes, they said, ‘this is not the work of a few text books.’
So the royal nephews summoned the text-book writers. Since they were not very original, they furiously made copies and copies of copies of all the books they knew, and soon the pile had reached mountainous proportions. Everyone looked at that mountain of books with awestruck eyes and said, ‘Bravo. This is learning indeed’.
The copyists received such large sums for their labours that they needed huge bullocks to carry all the money. For the rest of their days, they lived in luxury.

The royal nephews were ever vigilant about the precious cage. It was constantly cleaned, polished, and the minutest damage was repaired instantly. Everyone said, ‘this is progress!’.
Naturally, such a large-scale project needed lots of officers, and even more supervisors. Their bank accounts kept getting fatter month by month, and they and their near and distant relatives soon had large houses to their names. 

4

But there are many, many naysayers in the world. Some of them began to whisper, ‘the cage sure is prospering, but no one seems to know much about the bird.’ This reached the king’s ears, and so he called one of the nephews and said, ‘nephew! what is this that I hear?’
The nephew replied, ‘Sire! If you want the truth, ask the goldsmiths, the professors, the copyists, the officers, and the supervisors. The naysayers are merely jealous, for they don’t have enough to eat, hence they only go about criticizing others.’
The king, wise as he was, clearly understood the situation, and a golden necklace promptly adorned the nephew’s neck.

5

The king wished to see for himself how furiously the bird’s education was progressing, and hence he arrived with all his courtiers and hangers-on at the temple of learning.
As soon as he reached the gates, there was a tremendous cacophony of all sorts of musical instruments - conchshells and bells and drums and horns and trumpets and gongs and flutes and many others besides. The priests started chanting at the top of their voices and all the masons, goldsmiths, copyists, officers, supervisors and the royal nephews filled the skies singing the king’s praise. So impressed was the king with this, that he quite forgot about the bird, and was about to mount the royal elephant and turn back. However, one of the pesky naysayers had hidden himself behind a bush and from there he asked in a loud whisper, ‘Sire, did you manage to take a look at the bird?’
“Oh right!”, said the king, “I had almost forgotten about the bird.”
So he  went back and told the professors, ‘ I want to inspect your educational methods.’
A demonstration was promptly arranged, and it pleased the king no end. The methodology was so much grander than the bird that it was hardly visible. It was clear to the king that the arrangements were faultless. There was no water or food in the cage. Only heaps and heaps of pages, torn from heaps and heaps of books, were being stuffed into the bird’s mouth with the tip of  a pen. There was no room for the bird to even let out a cry, let alone a song. It was a most thrilling sight.
This time, before mounting the elephant, the king commanded the chief ear-boxer to properly box the ears of the naysayer.

6

As the days passed, the bird lost its wild ways and in keeping with the mores of genteel society, became half-dead. Its guardians realized that its prospects were quite hopeful. Yet, old habits die hard, especially bad habits, and the bird would stare at the morning sun and disgracefully flap its wings. In fact, one morning it was even discovered that it was trying to snap the rods of its cage with its shrivelled beak.
‘What seditious behaviour!’, said the home minister. Promptly the blacksmith arrived with his bellows, hammer and fire. ‘Wham, wham!’ went his hammer. An unbreakable iron chain was forged, and the bird’s wings were chopped off to boot.
Members of the royal family made grave faces and said, ‘Not only are the birds of this kingdom unwise, but they are also ungrateful.’
Then the professors arrived en masse with a pen in one hand, and a pike in the other, and what they did could truly be called an education. The blacksmith's wealth increased so much that his wife could adorn herself with gold ornaments, and the home-minister was given a state honour.

7

The bird died. When - that no one could tell. The horrid naysayer spread the news that the bird was dead.
The king called the nephew and asked, ‘nephew, what is this I hear?’
The nephew replied, ‘Sire, the bird’s education is now complete.’
The king asked, ‘ does it hop about anymore?’
The nephew said, ‘heaven forbid!’
‘does it fly anymore?’
‘No’
‘Does it sing anymore?’
‘No’
‘Does it still whine when it is not fed?’
‘No’.
The king said, ‘bring the bird here. I would like to see it once.’

The bird was brought in. Along with it came the home-minister, the guards, the cavalrymen. The king poked and prodded the bird, but it did not make a single sound. Only the dry pages of the textbooks in its stomach made a rustling noise.

Outside, the blossoms of the forest sighed so languidly in the south wind of spring, that they made the very sky yearn. 

Translated from Rabindranath Thakur’s Bengali short story “Totakaahini” by Arka Mukhopadhyay. © Arka Mukhopadhyay, 2011.

Bondage & Beyond

Illustration by Veena Basavarajaiah

Bondage & Beyond

by Veena Basavarajaiah 

What does the body mean to a dancer? What is movement to her beyond technique and training?

When form/grammar becomes synonymous with the identity does the body  become a mere instrument at our disposal that is subjected to methodologies and experimentation. Is it just a  phenomenon that is designed to recreate actions encoded through evolution? With tools of body mechanics the body has been disintegrated , dissected  constructed, deconstructed, isolated, fragmented and reassembled through ages almost giving it a state of automation to understand it better.

With her current work Veena Basavarajaiah treats her body as a bondage in itself and also her only tool to transcend beyond it. She plays with the idea of treating her body as a mere puppet subjecting herself to multiple factors to explore a contemporary body that is a result of all her body experiences and discover a body that exists beyond form , technique and physicality. An identity without a body, an 'I' without a form. 

A series of illustrations that translate her journey into images will be part of the exhibition. 

Bondage & Beyond is inspired by France based visual artist Nicole Dufour who has worked with the concept of identities seamlessly woven with bodies in space and time. The performance is the showcase of a solo that is currently a work in progress designed to develop into a full length solo.

Live music- Akhshay Gandhi

Performance & Illustrations by Veena Basavarajaiah

Venue- Shanthi Road Gallery, Shanthi road, Bangalore

Date- 8th May, 2011

Exhibition - 11am onwards

Short performance- Work in progress- 7- 30 pm.

Contact - Veena Basavarajaiah ( 08050821839 )

A solo by Vasudev.C 'Unwinding the past'

Unveiling a woven past

The mirror pool at the NGMA(National Gallery of Modern Art) reflects the image of a man clad in white long fabric wound around his body. He stands confident like a canvas ready to be filled with lines, shapes and colors. The voice of Hindustani singer Namrata Kartik layered with synthesized music of Yashas Shetty fills the out-door space of the gallery premises and the performer responds to the music by brushing the space through movements of Chauu.

A solo by Vasudev.C titled 'Unwinding the past' under the gallery's  programme ' Carte Blance- the grounds of NGMA for temporal art interventions' on the 8th of April 2011.This contemporary dancer trained in Mayurbanj Chauu under Bharat Sharma, is also a professional painter with an M.F.A (Master of Fine Arts) from the Chitrakala Parishat. The piece was presented in collaboration with photographer Ranna MV along with an exhibition of  photographs that captured the dancers motion in still images.

The painter/dancer formed patterns with his body and the fabric depicting past experiences , emotional fluctuations , relationships that are invariably attached to one's life.He wore it with elegance, fondled it with care , followed its trail , admired its texture while he slowly distances from the never-ending yards of its entanglement .A literal narrative very similar to the experiences of Buddha as he renounces the world to seek salvation is seen as the sub-text in the piece, where the performer weaves images of ego, suffering, passion, regret, disorientation and ultimately a peaceful state of being where he is one with the world.The cloth wrapped around his limbs and waist was used as symbolic representation of one's past while the unveiling  intended to convey liberation from this attachment. 

The piece had a frail movement strategy with the dancer twisting , turning, zigzagging , unwrapping the cloth throughout the entire piece. Moments of strong focus , momentum and stark stillness gave hope of taking the piece to a different level but lost to monotony during this hour-long piece. However the live melancholic music juxtaposed by recorded mechanical sounds was married with the artist's conceptualization and movements. Vasudev's effort to simplify an abstract piece was achieved through literal representation of emotions making the piece comprehendible  for a common man . The  choreography pleased  the eyes more like a beautiful painting than a movement performance, taking the audience's perception of visual art to a whole new level. 

http://www.narthaki.com/info/rev11/rev1014.html

Kalaghoda - Why horse around with performers ?

Lack of technical and organizational support, disappoints performers at the festival

Kala Ghoda needs no introduction to an Indian artist. A prestigious  festival that takes place in Mumbai,  draws artists and art lovers from across the country is every artist's dream , at least that is what all my colleagues who performed there had to say. With great expectations of being part of such a festival,  I prepared myself with intense rehearsals , music, properties  and light design.

The performance that is normally held in the centre of Horniman Gardens in Mumbai  was held in a small park that was incredibly unclean and surround by traffic noise. The stage was erected just in time while the green rooms were being constructed till the performance began and there was absolutely no washroom facilities anywhere around the stage.Performers could not have a light rehearsal as the performance was scheduled to start at 5pm and the lights arrived only post lunch. Despite specifying in advance, the light design for a contemporary dance piece , it was a disappointing to see parcans and scanners being used like christmas lights. 

The 7th of February 2011, was an evening filled with performances where dance was merely reduced to entertainment . From Kuchipudi to Kathak , Bharatnatyam to Belly dance , Cinematic to jazz , classical to contemporary, everything was jam packed within a schedule of six hours. A group of young girls came on stage and rehearsed a dance piece to a bollywood number calling it contemporary dance. Every form including cinematic dance has its place and audience. Jumbling Indian Classical dance with Belly dance and Jazz could simply leave the audience in a haze.

My experience at the Kalaghoda festival was extremely disappointing. I had accepted to perform at the festival after being offered a pay that did not even cover my travel expenses. With no accommodation or hospitality, I was lost in a strange city. Though the curator of the evening was trying to be hospitable, there was not much she could do, due to lack of funds and weak organizational support. It seemed torturous to force myself to perform in a space that seemed more like a merry-go-around in a fair and I took a decision to not perform at all. 

Would a swimmer swim in an empty pool even if it were the Olympic games ? Would a pianist play a piano with broken keys?, then why is it that dancers compromise with what they need to perform. A wooden floor to prevent serious injuries , good lights to enhance the choreography or convey a concept ,  decent levels of cleanliness and a platform where the art is given its due respect are bare necessities and not luxuries.

Every performer has the right to demand for technical support and ideal performing conditions. The organizers have the responsibility to keep their word. It is important to know that it is impossible to force someone to perform in disagreeing circumstances  and the choice of performance always remains with the performing artist. 

Art & Bullshit at Attakkalari Biennial 2011

Attakkalari Biennial 2011, a ten day  International festival held in Bangalore between the of 28th January and the 6th of February featured some of the best contemporary work from across the globe. With high lights such as dance films, young choreographers platform, dance writing workshops, choreography laboratories, seminars and International collaborations,  the festival catered to the needs of contemporary artists and art lovers on multiple levels. the performance at Ranga Shankara on the third day of the festival was 'a mixed bill of 6 choreographic works that enabled the exchange of three artists from the UK and three Indian choreographers as part of the UK- India- Connecting through Cultural Programme

Uruvam', solo by Hemabharathy Palani developed under the auspice of the Robert Bosch Art Grant 2009 tried to focus on the theme of anguish and the giving up of one's body and sexual identity in order to access a greater range of rights and actions. She uses fabric as a symbolic representation of sexual identities as she sheds them one after another aiming to convince the spectators of a 'self' without a body and identity. Hema speaks with a  unique movement language that has strong and grounded technique in Kuchipudi and she executes every move with strength and poise. The music is characterized by the  clap of the Heijras or eunuchs while random meaningless projections by Matsuo Kunihiko ( Japanese digital artist)  adds  layers to this multi media piece.

The next piece begins with  someone from the audience throwing a piece of bread on stage. Perplexed! you look for the culprit who dared to perform this forbidden act. Its a young black man and he does it again and again . He staggers on to the stage, places a white plastic brick with a fake bird perched on it and talks to us in a British accent  interjected with bird calls.In  Freddie Opoku - Addaie's  solo ' A flightless solo' ,his chiseled body alights on his hands and he pecks on the food thrown on stage. He reads to us from a tiny book about the intellectuality of bullshit .  His movements are limited to finding bird food and partner work with  an inanimate object. "Producing, producing.." he chants while he distributes plastic bags to a few members of the audience who receive the crap given to them without questions or defense.Finally he proclaims that producing art is bullshit while the audience responds with laughter at his honesty. As a  spectator he dares to walk on stage to dissolve the transparent wall that exists between us. It did not matter if he was Black or British , he boldly voiced the contemporary state of art today. He did not question or pose a threat He just suspended the sword of sharp reality over our head.

'Rush' by Ajeesh . K . Balakrishnan's choreographic work, revolved around those bound by routine drudgery in a world devoid of imagination. The profundity of the concept was lost in the execution and the dance looked more like a section from a bollywood film with its cinematic music , bad costumes and overacting.

'Padheyam' choreographed by Santhosh V.S of Attakkalari Repertory was another example of amateur choreography where the dancers kept losing balance and control while lifting each other. A pathway of light was designed to weave on the ideas of journey and  encounters in life. The choreography hardly had any inventiveness with no importance assigned to the gestures of Bharatnatyam  that kept appearing randomly in the piece.

'Across the souvenir' by Alesandra Seutin was like a guided tour  through the choreographers' memories. A unique movement vocabulary that translated the rawness of her African origin, the visuals that transported the audience to the places she had visited and a surreal execution that gave an insight into her imagination.The concluding performance ' Single act'  was inspired by the personal experiences of British Lao choreographer Khamlane Halsackda .The fragmented narration was coupled  with a movement vocabulary  inspired by real-life situations.He recalls and shares his memories of  childhood, relationships and what love means to him and perhaps to each one of us.

6 diverse choreographic works stacked next to each other had a saturating effect on the audience. Many works had to be watched in isolation and a few pieces lacked depth and due research. While many performances delved into  issues of identity, sexuality , performance and individuality of the contemporary,  some of the amateur choreographers who were new to  exploration in choreographic work simply failed to represent the best of young Indian choreographers on this occasion.

Parivahitham- Dancing through trouble times

Photo courtesy- Shreekanth.L.Rao

Parivahitham- Dancing through trouble times

A Kolkata based dance company gave their best performance with almost no technical support at the performance space.

 In their latest Indo-Swiss production 'Parivahitham', Sapphire creations dance workshop, a Kolkata based dance company collaborated with Swiss musician, Marc Rossier resulting in a  marriage of music and movement. Artistic Director and Choreographer of the company ,Sudarshan Chakravorty presented his piece  with five of his company dancers on 19th of Dec 2010 in Bangalore at Freedom Park Amphi Theatre 

Slow and insightful , a  female dancer draws the audience into the piece with her solo, where she awakens every cell of her body  preparing it for a  long journey ahead of her and the music becomes a reflection of her state of being. The piece introduced every individual through solos that translated  their personal discomfort into their bodies. Movements drawn from physical disabilities, pain and emotional fluctuations highlight the piece. It gradually picks up momentum with strong lines and gestures of Bharatanatyam subjected to suspension and velocity,  interwoven with handstands, cartwheels, rolls , falls and partner work. 

Many sections done in unison looked superimposed on the dancers and the lack of strong technique in Bharatnatyam  is very transparent in the performers. The  dancers Paramita Saha, Dibyendu Nath, Nikita Bhattacharya and Koushik Das though seemed a bit self indulgent at times had a lovely stage presence and executed the piece with confidence, while Ankita Duttagupta simply kept the audience engaged throughout the piece with  her beautiful lines and strong focus. In India Choreographic work  that features a strong classical movement vocabulary subjected to various western movement techniques is not a new concept anymore, however the piece had its moments of magic when every dancer's individuality characterized by a unique music score surfaced brilliantly in the piece.

Music in contemporary dance has almost become synonymous with orchestrated sounds and noise. Live music can be wonderful expressive tool adding to the intensity of a piece to truly explore the magic of 'live' performance.

It was  Marc's first collaboration with an Indian company and he came sans expectations to work with Sapphire Creations. Though he was not part of the entire creative process, he stepped into the piece when the choreography was completely set and composed music based on discussions with the choreographer and watching rehearsals. He observed every dancer and played  based on the emotional essence of the choreography.He played his guitar with rhythmic patterns playing in tandem with the dancers and also going against the flow of movement.His music was another fixed dancer on stage where composition interacted with choreography through harmony, contrast and silence.

The lack of technical support at the Freedom park Amphi theatre disintegrated the sections that were designed to be done in specific lights. The lack of wooden floor made the dancers move cautiously for they had to prevent themselves from getting injured on a hard concrete floor. The acoustics required for an open space were absent, making Marc's job much more difficult. The piece  designed for a proscenium theatre space failed to make an impact on the audience due to lack of appropriate lights and sound. 'Parivahitham'  aimed to explore movement  through  troubled times  hoping for a constructive, positive and meaningful time in the near future and their performance with deficient organization at the venue allowed them to  literally experience the essence of the piece.