Being spiritual in style

Graceful movements

Themes of diversity ran like like a skein of richly coloured silk through the performance and woven into its tapestry were shades of diverse dance forms drawn from the East and West.

Yoga, classical ballet, peppy music videos, dreamy love duets and hit broadway musicals – Yana drew from all these influences and put together a wonderful performance that highlighted the fact that a well-trained dancer can indeed dance anything.

The first sequence began with the graceful Sundance Ceremony that combined the spirituality of yoga with the techniques of Western ballet. Next was a whimsical and ethereal performance of softly flitting nymphs in a fairy like midsummer garden.

The stylised doll like movements of the classic Coppelia then gave the audience a peep into another dimension of classical ballet. Collage, a commercial style music video had all the energy and oomph of a modern day foot-tapping  production for the wired up Generation Y. A dreamy love duet, based on the classic Whitney Houston song I will always love you was performed as a soulful lyrical jazz piece. It had two star-crossed lovers from diverse cultures – an Indian maiden schooled in Bharatanatyam and a South American boy dancing in the Latino style.

Then moving to a different beat, the dancers did the peppy Broadway style jazz number by Peggy Lee – Fever.

The second half had the intriguingly named piece IC408 inspired by an Indian Airlines flight. The passenger falls asleep and drifts into a surreal world where he dances with the other passengers on the wing of the plane. Shock Value, a solo performed and choreographed in the contemporary jazz style by a male dancer brought out the soul searching agony of a person seeking redemption.

Identity, another contemporary piece had five individual dancers coming together to form one whole. The dance of the sugar plum fairy from the much-loved ballet the Nutcracker was another well-performed piece and the grand finale from the hit broadway musical Cats brought the show to a resounding climax.

“I wanted to show audiences that intensive training is an integral part of being a good dancer. Contrary to common perception, dancers in the West are trained either in a strict technique based on classical ballet or in techniques introduced by the 20th-century modern-dance choreographers – just like classical dancers in India,” says Yana.