FIRST PASSAGE, 1989
Installation: Pierre Legrand
I worked with the
Auroville Dance Lab
a group of
dancers from
varied backgrounds.
We learnt from
each other.
IMAGES
FROM THE PRESENT
1991
DANCERS
Joy -- Paulo -- Anu
Kanchana -- Aurelio
Lia -- Veronique
VOICES
Joy -- Roger – Anu
TECH:
Jean L. |
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MANTRA happened
in 1997, in Auroville
It was also
invited to the Naya
Ballet festival at
Sri Ram Centre,
New Delhi and to the
Darpana Academy festival,
Ahmedabad
Perfomred by the
Auroville Dance Lab
Choreography
Anu Majumdar |
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Choreography
Why?
I love watching kites fly. How the rough thread releases like a wave in the sky and then becomes the wind. Everything in this universe is in movement, like our lives in continuous breath. The movement of a word in the mind can create a song in the heart. The movement of a song through the wind can cause a child to dance. Dance is also a momentum moving thousands to break down a wall. Like the universe that continuously creates and destroys itself. How to move with it?
Training:
I trained in Bharatanatyam under Krishna Kumar Reddy and loved the knowledge of the body centre. Its lines and radials, its rhythm and fluidity and its joy. I loved cycling down for class when so much more became alive: music on the streets, flowers in the ladies’ hair, the hands of the vegetable seller. Or, sounds of different languages in the Auroville store, textures of argument, rivers of laughter, broken rhythms of discord, a cadence in harmony, strewn leaves on red earth, shafts of light through a crack, shadow, trees holding centre in a raging storm, images on the front page. Eventually, some T’ai Chi , Kalaripayet and Modern Dance. And breath.
Choreography:
Choreography came out of all that, like writing a book in another language, in another medium. Sometimes abstract, sometimes full of stories, sometimes just breath and poetry.
Dance began to text
Text began to dance…
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CROSSROADS
MANTRA
CHANT FOR THE EARTH
SPEAKING IN TONGUES
More at
Auroville Dance Page
Turn your head a little
Which side are you on?
Left or right?
Right or wrong?
Or at the centre
Where the traffic honks
And the street is torn
with numbers.
CROSSROADS 1994
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CROSSROADS
an inward outlook in the change of reason…
supple transit
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PROGRAMME NOTES / ‘96
Crossroads is about change.
First performed in Auroville (1994), for the UNESCO conference : Humanity at the Crossroads – Evolution of Consciousness, Crossroads has since been performed at most contemporary dance festivals and platforms across India.
Based on a poem by the choreographer, Anu Majumdar, Crossroads works on many layers simultaneously: word, voice, language, movement, theatre, light, space and breath.
Space is textured and continuously re-arranged by Pierre Legrand’s visual interventions.
The composer Holger Jetter used the poem as a base for the music.
Recorded in three voices and layered by repetition, texturing, rhythm, tone, space, and silence: a rap opera of another kind…
The Auroville Dance Lab is an international group of dancers who come from different dance and movement backgrounds …
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grey alleys
jump lanes
street by street
on the main
highway
the white fire
rises rises
PHOTOS
Ireno Guerci
Jean-Michel Argouin
position ahead
the conscious
frontier
advances with
change
go to
CHOREOGRAPHY
MANTRA
SPEAKING IN
TONGUES
MANTRA |
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MANTRA : a chant for the earth
Mantra was a stylized work,
inspired by Sri Aurobindo’s
translations and interpretations
of the Rig Veda.
Here the Rig Veda seen as a
personal workbook for the soul:
an inner journey free of dogma.
The journey marks the different
stages of the human soul’s
perfection and its growing
harmony with the world.
From Fire to Light, to
Consciousness, to Love.
Once I found a way to chant the
translated English verses
rhythmically, choreography
emerged.
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THOU ART THE LORD
WHO LOOKS WITH
EQUAL EYES
ON ALL
THE PEOPLES
IN MANY LANDS
THOU ART OF THE
WIDE WILL
WHEN THOU ART
KINDLED, O FIRE,
THOU BECOMEST
THE LORD OF LOVE WHEN THOU ART
ENTIRELY ALIVE
go to
CROSSROADS
CHOREOGRAPHY
SPEAKING IN
TONGUES
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REVIEWS
Fresh, dynamic imagery…trained dancers and synchronicity of movement left little to be desired. Production values were high. Music sparingly used and the dancers blended voices reciting the Rig Veda verses was very effective. Equally so, the superimposition of the English verses…Yet another noticeable quality was the meditative atmosphere which did not get punctured. Visually powerful.
Leela Venkatraman, THE HINDU
Anu Majumdar and Auroville Dance Lab prove that excellence is possible in isolation.
SUNDAY TIMES, NEW DELHI
A rare experience. Majumdar creates exquisite visual imagery along with grace, lyricism and magnificence.
SUNDAY TIMES, AHMEDABAD
SPEAKING IN TONGUES
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