The Vishwakiran Nambi Dance Company gears up for its first major performance

One of the city’s most famous contemporary dance companies The Vishwakiran Nambi Dance Company (VNDC) is all set to stage its first major production in the city today. VNDC is predominantly an Indian contemporary dance company who focus on socio-political concepts. Their pieces talk about the city and the conditions that people live in. As the crew prepares for its performance, Vishwakiran Nambi, the director of VNDC, lets us in on their forthcoming performance and more.

Vishwakiran is a contemporary choreographer, who once was a lead dancer in a dance company. He has been choreographing for over 10 years now and has also worked in cinema as well (mostly in Kannada, Tamil and Telugu). “We present two pieces, one being titled Jaaga Illa and the other being Yele Oota. The first one talks about the growing congestion issue in metropolitans, especially Bengaluru,” Vishwakiran begins.

Jaaga Illa is a 45 minute piece, where seven dancers will be performing on a small plank which is 6 x 3 feet. The performance also includes projection mapping where content will be projected on the side of the plank, which will change constantly. “So, Jaaga Illa talks about one of the core issues of congestion in the city, which is migration. The performance talks about the ecology of modern India and gives visuals about crowded bus stands, temples, ticket counters and more,” he adds.

The second piece titled Yele Oota, is a very elaborative piece which is almost an hour long. It talks about the uneven distribution of food. “The idea started from my experience of distributing grains during COVID-19 to the less fortunate. We distributed food to almost 2,000 families and these were the people who were living only two streets away from me. So, someone who lives that close to me and doesn’t have food was an eye opening experience for me,” shares Vishwakiran.

This piece talks about the eating habits of people especially during big feasts like weddings. So, it aims at bringing the idea of gluttony forward. The performance will have 10 dancers who will sit down on the stage and will have a banana leaf in front of them. The leaf will have edible paint in it and the dancers will
smear it across their face and eat that paint. It’s a gruesome representation of people who overeat.

“This performance also talks about the sun, because it is someone who gives to everybody without any discrimination,” says the choreographer.

Before the two performances take place, there will be an aerial silk performance titled Chaukha. The dancers will be suspended over a 20 feet crane and have been training for almost five years. They will climb the silk and perform. The piece is about 17 minutes long, where the performers will come down, go up, do drops and more.

Sharing more insights about this piece, Vishwakiran says, “I am using aerial silk as a metaphor to gain height in one’s own mind. When we look at the troll culture nowadays, we want people to grow out of this mentality of reacting to people who are throwing something at you and find meaning from within.”

Talking about how he decide on the theme of the performances, the dancer says, “I talk about issues that affect me a lot. The reason why I chose Jaaga Illa is because of the amount of travel I did in Bengaluru for the past 35 years. The time it takes to reach from point A to point B has increased by 200 to 300 percent.”

“I am going to apply in most festivals. I definitely want to take the performance to Chennai, Kochi, Mumbai and maybe to Mysuru too. My next piece is called Exodus, which talks about how labour class people had to leave the city and were walking on roads during COVID-19,” says Vishwakiran, signing off.

₹200 onwards. April 7, 5 pm. At Chowdiah Memorial Hall, Malleswaram.

Email: alwin@newindianexpress.com
Twitter: @al_ben_so