“When you’re younger, you hesitate,” says bharatanatyam dancer and choreographer Hema Rajagopalan. “But when you’re older, you’re ready to say to narrow-minded “connoisseurs’: Hey listen, listen to me. I am challenging you. Tell me what is wrong with it.”
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Rajagopalan has been experimenting with classical Indian dance for 20 years, taking the results of her experience with Western dance back to India–and getting good reviews. Now she’s gone further, collaborating on a duet with Jan Bartoszek, a modern choreographer and the artistic director of Hedwig Dances Performance Company. Conversation emerged from their ongoing study of each other’s work–and specifically from a “conversation” they had one day in the studio when they stood in opposite corners and played a game of “show me yours and I’ll show you mine.” Modern dancer Julie Hopkins and bharatanatyam dancer Sonia Gurwara will perform the results at Hedwig’s tenth-anniversary concerts, this weekend and next.
But even “pure dance” (the form used in Conversation) is codified, and in that sense much like ballet: the positions of the feet are regulated, as are other shapes, and the movement is conceived in geometric terms, as parallel lines, perpendicular lines, arcs, circles, and so on. Meanwhile, in motions very different from ballet, the feet (often belled at the ankles) beat out complicated rhythmic patterns from a position low to the ground. Rajagopalan calls it “an extremely complex art form,” in which every part of the body–even the eyes–moves, and often in isolation from the others. If you can’t rub your stomach and pat your head, you can’t do this kind of dance. But she adds that the many rules can be liberating, creating shifting patterns that give a kaleidoscopic effect.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): Photo/Bruce Powell.
