Gandhism through Bharatanatyam

Padmashri awardee danseuse Geeta Chandran will premiere her new abstract dance work Gandhi: Warp and Weft at the New Convention Centre at JNU, come August 17.

The performance is part of the Gandhirama Festival and an international conference organised by the Indian Council of Philosophical Research. Gandhi: Warp and Weft explores key concepts from Gandhian philosophy through the narrative lens of a female dancer in the 21st century.

Explaining the concept, Geeta says, “The choreography plays with ideology through abstract movement as well as narrative gestures, and incorporates both classical Bharatanatyam as well as contemporary movement theatre in its physical vocabulary. The performance comprises six concepts interpreted through dance that flows contiguously from one to the other. The first concept is religious unity, and is connected to the deep reliance on spiritual syncretism that Mahatma Gandhi propagated.”

The second section celibacy probes Gandhi’s life long experiment to set aside desires of the flesh while remaining in other ways an active householder and husband. The third theme explored is satyagraha, and is inspired by Gandhi’s prison writings, his mass civil disobedience movements, and epochal moments like the Dandi march.

From there, the piece explores ahimsa, both in the concept of turning the other cheek as peace offering, as well as the violence inflicted on the self through such radical protests like hunger strikes.

The fifth section of the act looks at caste and shram with an eye both to the reformations of the past that Gandhi sought regarding the dignity of labour, as well as the atrocities of caste oppression that continue to our present day.

The concluding section Khadi examines Gandhi’s belief for ecological sustainability and balance and uses thread as a metaphor for the bonds that the Gandhian movement sought to create across the nation.

Geeta Chandran’s Gandhi: Waft and Weft will be performed to an evocative soundscape engineered by sound artist Pratik Biswas, which weaves diverse sound elements ranging from traditional carnatic tracks to the more esoterically abstract.