Dance Bridges Festival brings international performing artistes to Kolkata, from Aug 20 - 24

Kolkata is all set to become a merging pot of contemporary performing arts where artistes from various countries would be coming over to showcase their body of works during the sixth edition of the Dance Bridges Festival kicking off from today. Curated by Vanessa Mirza, this year the theme rests as ‘Converging Identities’.  Vanessa mentions, “This year for the first time we have a performance from Canada ( Croquis by Fakeknot) and another from Brazil ( Tearjerker by Experimentus Dance Company). I always love that the Festival connects people from different parts of the world while introducing internationals to Bengal’s culture and art scene.”

What to expect?

The Festival will be held from August 20 – 24 over four venues including the Gyan Mancha, The Creative Arts Academy, International Management Institute (IMI), and Anuchintan Art Centre. Parallel workshops and screenings will be held across multiple venues in the city.  Notable curations that cannot be missed includes Laura Kenyon’s We are not beautiful from UK/ France; Sayan Debnath’s Luminance from India; Uday Shankar’s dance technique workshop; Paper dress crafting workshop by Ralph Escamillan and others.

Says curator, Vanessa Mirza, founder-director of Dance Bridges Festival, “This year I led the curation independently and it was very exhilarating to programme a mix of artistes, some of whom I’ve been in conversation with for 2-3 years and others that I’ve connected with quite recently through the open call and other dance platforms.”  She further mentions, “What’s new this year? We have many more post-show artiste talks and a networking platform called DBF Rendezvous over 2 days. The theme Converging Identities resonates very deeply given our current socio-political landscape.”

About the performances

The Festival brings together over 15 artistes from Spain, Canada, Portugal, Brazil, France, Italy, Taiwan, Cyprus, Ukraine, Nigeria, Tunisia, Denmark and Bangladesh, Each body of work has its own significant style and language and yet they all interact with the audience to the point where they start a pertinent conversation regarding contemporary society.

Take Dom Czapski’s performance for instance! Dom mentions, “Waiting Music follows a call-centre worker on the night shift, alone, cold-calling strangers until morning. The work is wearing him down, though the routine has become a comfort - until one night a strange call comes in. Not quite a play or a dance piece, the work was made in close collaboration with experimental composer Jamie Hamilton, aiming for something between literary fiction and experimental concert: the interiority and monomaniacal voice of a novel, inside music you’re meant to listen to rather than hear past. A recorded voice tells the man’s story while his body performs it, and the two come apart.”

Taiwanese artiste Yu-Chi Chen also talks about his performance, “Meeting Point, explores the idea of encounter. It begins with a series of first encounters—with our individuality, nature, desires, vulnerability, and our relationship with the world. While these encounters may seem different, each becomes a way of discovering ourselves. Through the body, I want to explore how we come to know ourselves through these encounters, and how, by knowing ourselves, we can begin to truly move toward another person and build a connection. Ultimately, the work invites the audience, through their own experience of watching and feeling, to encounter themselves.”

This year’s program includes performances, showcases, residency outputs, film screenings, artiste talks, workshops and dance jam bringing together a holistic potpourri of activities for the audience. For the first time some events are also ticketed, where the proceeds go for funding independent performers. Held across nine venues for over four days, the Dance Bridges Festival is sure to engage the audience with new direction of thoughts.

Check out the Dance Bridges Festival social media for full schedule.

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