If you are based in Guwahati and have always been intrigued about the intricacies of performing arts, now is your chance. The Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts, Bangalore, one of India’s foremost institutes in movement training, has chosen Guwahati for their open day sessions this year. These sessions are free for all, and seek to provide a glimpse into Attakkalari’s work in contemporary movement.
Ahead of their session, I had a chance to talk with Attakkalari’s founder and renowned choreographer and movement artist Jayachandran Palazhy, who, interestingly, is visiting Guwahati for the first time.
Speaking with me on the eve of his trip, Palazhy said he was excited to be coming to the Northeast. I was equally excited to see the presence of such a well known establishment in the city and at the possibilities that might emerge with a sustained engagement in the city’s cultural landscape.
“We feel duty bound to share with people what we do – particularly our journey, what kind of experience and expertise and knowledge we have gathered over the years. So these workshops are an attempt towards that direction, to at least give a glimpse, a window through which people can peep into what has been going on at Attakkalari. Maybe it might stimulate such initiatives in other places as well,” he said in an exclusive interview with EastMojo.
The Guwahati chapter of Attakkalari’s Open Day was made possible in collaboration with Srimanta Sankardeva Kalakshetra Samaj, Panjabari and Queer Objects.
Queer Objects is an art and community incubator that is composed of queer and allied folx in Guwahati, Assam. Queer Objects in association with other partners plan to host many more such movement oriented workshops in Guwahati.
Palazhy received his formal training from the London Contemporary Dance School, where he was exposed to ballet, different styles of contemporary dance, choreography, stagecraft etc. Before that, he spent 6 years studying Indian traditional forms in Chennai. It was during this time that he was exposed to and studied classical forms like Bharatanatyam, Kathakali and folk forms like Therukoothu. This exposure to ancient classical forms went on to form the base of his movement explorations. Talking about the concept of Attakkalari, Palazhy says, “Our main principle is ‘traditional physical wisdom, innovation, and technology’. By this, I mean how to draw sustenance from our own physical and performance traditions, unearthing the concepts of body and principles of movement embedded in these forms, and then take those ideas and then work with the contemporary experiences, memories, and imagination, and create images that are, kind of related to our contemporary sensibilities.”
It is perhaps then, no coincidence that Attakkalari’s movement vocabulary is primarily informed and influenced by Indian physical traditions, particularly Bharatnatyam and Kalaripayattu. It was his training at LCDS and his exposure to various other forms and to the overall art environment that equipped him with the criticality required to approach these traditional forms through contemporary lenses. “London was a a big crucible for me to get a bit of distance from India, to kind of objectively look at Indian tradition, and also get some tools and devices to dissect, deconstruct all this form so that I can understand the kind of, syntax, grammar, structure of this form.”
This need to study the inherent movement principles of traditional art forms has been a lifelong fascination for Palazhy. It has resulted in one of his major ongoing projects, an extensive research and archival undertaking titled, Nagarika, created in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan Bangalore. The project began as an integrated information system on the movement principles of Indian physical traditions. “Actually, you have to ask questions. You have to find what is the principle of that movement, how it originates, how it processes through the body, what is the intention, what is its quality, whether it is soft or tense or staccato or lyrical. And, we have for that purpose, identified a sequence of movement, not the entire dance, but sequences of movement as articulations of certain physicality, certain movement vocabulary, certain musical preferences, and all of that.”
Explaining further, he says, “We concentrate on how the movement language, and the particular aesthetics of the movement, the kinesthetic aspects of that movement language has evolved. And instead of locating dance in a kind of divine origin, we wanted to see, locate it in the realm of the practice of the masters. So the explanations are given by the masters from the vantage point of their practice. And that is very critical because then you understand this is what they have been told by their masters. And the younger generation can understand this is how they were looking at these questions that they were asking..”
Two chapters have been released so far to the public – one on the classical dance form Bharatanatyam, and one on the martial art form Kalaripayattu in the form of two DVDs. They are currently working on researching Odissi.
Palazhy is also one of the curators for the Serendipity Arts Festival this year. Asked about the current state of training in contemporary movement, he stresses on how pre-pandemic there was an emphasis on an in depth training to master the body, but since the pandemic people started simply copying movements they saw online. This superficial copying a video or a movement becomes detrimental to the creativity of the artist, he warns.
“I mean, you can refer to something. But, to inculcate creativity is by developing the facilities in the body, not just doing, just do one kind of movement over and over again and, like a route learning. That doesn’t help.”
He goes on to stress about the importance with regards to institutional training in contemporary dance. “Contemporary dance primarily is not about teaching a technique or a dance. It is teaching how to dance. So, in other words, providing the facilities in the body, things and tools. So that they can develop their own movement or be able to incorporate or embody another kind of movement language when a choreographer or another artist asks them to do so. So that facility is what we are inculcating in the dance. But for a contemporary dancer, you should also have the fitness of a pentathlon athlete. You know, that is necessary because it’s not only vertically standing in on your feet, but it’s also movements and your centre is shifting. And you can be upside down. You can be rolling on the floor. You can be up in the air. So those are facilities that are also needed for a contemporary dance. So this oscillation between the performer based ideas of space and the empirical space gets articulated beautifully by contemporary dance practices. And this is, I would say, at the centre of what Artakalari is trying to do.”
When asked about the key to sustaining a lifelong practice he says that most artists he has met have come to the realisation that this is the only thing that they can wholeheartedly do. “All other things are all outside their priority. Artistic practice is the main driving force of their life. You know, that is when we come fully alive. Every molecule is our life, in our body. Mind, body, spirit all come to the fore, and that is when we are living fully.”
Also Read: How Boroxun’s Maitri Das navigates life as a theatre artist in Assam