JOIN USSeeking answer for an eternal question ‘Who am I? , contemporary dancer Himani Sharma enters the stage.
She swiftly walks and picks up a harem pant lying on the sofa, placed on one corner. Himani, suddenly, starts to play with it as music rolls on in the background. Within few seconds, Himani throws off those pants and picks a skirt from the clothes rack. Continuing with her dance, she even sheds that skirt and picks up other clothing.
As Himani goes on changing attires, her performance also intensifies. There is a meaning to that continuous process - a reflection of the present day quandary of most individuals confused about their own identity. And, for this she uses materialistic world of designer labels and clothing to establish perfect ground for confusion in modern day living.
One of the most powerful performances at the Narendra Sharma Festival of Dance, a festival of contemporary dance solos by Bhoomika at Shri Ram Centre for Arts and Culture, the three- day festival saw brilliant performances by dancers like Himani who explored their imagination and try to answer the unanswered.
“One of the core principles of contemporary dance is to enable dancers to look into their selves to discover a fresh language to express ideas from their immediate life,” says Bharat Sharma, director of the festival. ‘Techniques, styles and thought processes, drawn from different cultures, enrich the search of soloists. Over the three days of the festival, each dancer appears on stage to say their part of the story through dance,” he adds.
Using the stage as a canvas for boundless imagination choreographer and dancer Santosh Nair presented ‘Inner Images’. “When I connect to the silence within me, that is when I understand the process and bring to the outer world my interpretation. This dance is attempted to interpret and express those images,” says Santosh, who has an expertise in Kathak but is a well versed with other styles too, including contemporary.
In creating those different images, Santosh creates synchronicity between different medium of expressions such as lights, music and visuals. Lights concept by RK Dhingra and visuals by Hemant Srivastava, added a lot to Santosh’s nice, soft and flexible postures. His movements resonated with the image on the screen in the backdrop.
Likewise, Shubhro Ghosh re-lives poignant memories, emotions and desires by playing out a story where people strive for freedom. In his performance Wheeling Through, choreographed by Tripura Kashyap, he uses a wheelchair as a metaphor for disillusionment, frustration, reaching out, playfulness and finally acceptance.
Performances by other dancers like Sohini Dutta, Subhasish Dey, Sangeeta Sharma, Bharat Sharma, Sumeet Nagdev, Rajayshree Ramamurthi, Neha Gupta , Karan Kumar and Surjit Nongmeikapam were also noteworthy.