Dancer Sudarshan Chakravorty and his team to represent India at Spirit of Dance festival in Kazakhstan

Renowned choreographer Sudarshan Chakravorty and his team from his institute, Sapphire will be going to Kazakhstan to participate in the prestigious Spirit of Dance festival
Dancer Sudarshan Chakravorty and his team to represent India at Spirit of Dance festival in Kazakhstan

Renowned choreographer Sudarshan Chakravorty and his team from his institute, Sapphire will be going to Kazakhstan to participate in the prestigious Spirit of Dance festival, that will be held between September 10 and 17 as a part of the 20th anniversary celebrations of Kazakhstan’s capital Astana.

Chakravorty and his team of seven members will be the sole representatives of India in that festival organised by Kazakhstan’s ministry of culture and sports. The other participating countries include Ireland, Canada, Georgia, Latvia and Uzbekistan among others.

The festival has been very creatively ideated, where dancers from each country will perform and mingle with musicians and dancers of other countries in a seamless interface of art, aesthetics and culture, blurring all boundaries.

Choreographer Sudarshan Chakravorty with his team
Choreographer Sudarshan Chakravorty with his team

“I will be representing India along with five dancers from my institute Sapphire and one disc jockey DJ Shakey and a traditional percussionist, Indrajit Pradhan. We will be staging a project called, Making Mudra Sense, where we will be tweaking the tradition of Indian aesthetics with new sensibilities of Indian contemporary dance,” informs Chakravorty in between day-long rehearsal at his studio in Salt Lake.

Chakravorty is extremely happy with decriminalisation IPC 377, too. “It’s a victory for my journey, both as an artiste and as a person belonging to a community, which eventually got the recognition that was long due. The biggest outlet of my voice had always been my art and since I had no baggage of taboo, I had relentlessly spoken about the issue even when it was a hush-hush affair. The gradual acceptance of the physical vocabulary of contemporary dance makes me happy,” says the soft spoken dancer.

In fact, Chakravorty claims to be one of the first of choreographers in Asia to stage an act, Alien Flower, way back in 1996, to talk about same gender love on stage. It was criticised by a huge section of the artiste community in particular, despite praises from the audience. “We travelled with the production to various dance festivals in Australia and Italy and staged it here again last year, celebrating 25 years of our dance institute Sapphire,” tells Chakravorty.

Making Mudra Sense will be a 30-minute concert where two independent accts will be performed with Indian musicians playing live music and another two acts will be performed with musicians from Georgia and Kazakhstan. “We have been sent the music track by them and the choreography has been more or less designed. But we will further improvise the act in Kazakhstan with the collaboration of the musicians,” says Chakravorty.

Chakravorty and his team will be performing on September 14 in the biggest hall of Kazakhstan, The Royal Central Hall. “This festival is all the more significant for us all, since this will be the first ever contemporary dance festival, where Indian dancers will be travelling after the bilateral relationship agreement was written between India and Kazakhstan recently,” adds Chakravorty.

The Spirit of Dance is a multimedia show witnessing participation from the experts in dance and music across the globe. The event showcases a seamless representation of a unique synthesis of modern electronic music, elements of ethnic melodies and a dance mash-up. What sets the show apart is the non-stop performances on a multi-level and multi-functional stage with live sound and a stunning display of lights.

One of the key ideas of the Festival is to provide a platform to the representatives of music and dance trends from different parts of the world and thereby create a synthesis of cultures.

Related Stories

No stories found.
Indulgexpress
www.indulgexpress.com