The idea of a dance workshop doesn’t necessarily have to concentrate on the performance aspect. Contemporary dance guru Padmini Chettur will host one tomorrow — her first online class — where she will dissect the theoretical aspects, treating the session more as a lecture or seminar, rather than a practical lesson.
Chennai-based Chettur is someone who started learning Bharatanatyam at the age of seven, before her passion took a backseat in her early twenties when she joined college. “I was in a different, academic space and was starting to lose interest in dance. But then a friend suggested that I try out pioneering Bharatanatyam danseuse Chandralekha’s classes. That’s how my interest in dance saw a resurgence,” she says.
Chettur adds that the workshop will be divided into different parts, where she will talk about the influence that Chandralekha had on her as an artiste. She says, “Speaking about dance can be a difficult subject to articulate. What I will try and do at the workshop is look at how the body reacts in relation to space and time, which are essentially the building blocks of choreography.”
She also says that she will be talking about experts who she likes, and that contemporary dance in India is a complicated field. “The country has actually been fairly closed to this style, and I want to understand what it means to strike a balance between the East and the West,” Chettur tells us.
The 50-year-old continues, “I think any art form teaches you how to live, in one way. Dancing has taught me how to see the body, and in that sense, it’s different from other intellectual practices, like writing.”
The workshop, she adds, will be “dense and complex”. “I am going to delve into the technicalities that I have understood, being a choreographer who isn’t used to churning out pieces really fast. I always take time in moving from one piece to the next.”
On June 16, 6.30 pm
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