Modern look at Indian dance

SINGAPORE - Chowk Productions is headed by classically trained dancer Raka Maitra (below) and was kickstarted by an $80,000 seed grant which the National Arts Council awarded the group earlier this year. Chowk, a Hindi word which means square, refers to a market square and also the basic posture of the Odissi dance form.

The company will be staging the classical performance, You Cannot Look Away, on Friday and Saturday.

Although the company has just been formalised, Maitra, 43, has been teaching dance since 2007. She says of Chowk's creation: "There's no platform in Singapore for full-time Indian dancers, so I wanted to develop that here, a place where we can have paid dancers doing serious work."

She has 32 students, aged seven to 30something, in her fold. Seven of them train more seriously, at least five days a week, for performances.

She does not have any dancers on her payroll yet.

Her goal is clear, she says. "I want to train students for performances. There will be two sections, contemporary and classical. I want to train people in the classical and develop contemporary work from there."

The company will put on two works a year - one classical and one contemporary.

This year's contemporary show, The Blind Age, will take place in November as part of the Esplanade's Kalaa Utsavam festival, which focuses on Indian arts.

As for the upcoming classical performance, Maitra says classical does not necessarily mean traditional.

"Our classical performances will be very relevant to today. Tradition is closely related to the divine, but I just want to look at the form and the physicality, or Odissi, and how I can use it to tell stories which are relevant today."

You Cannot Look Away is divided into four segments - two focus on the physicality of the Odissi form and two are based on a Tamil poem, My Land, by Indian poet Cheran. All the segments will be accompanied by live music from drums, violin, flute and a vocalist.

Cheran's poem, which is about feeling rooted in his homeland, will be read out in English and Tamil, and translations will be provided in the programme booklet.

Maitra, who is married with two sons, says: "The poem is very beautiful and you can read it any way you want. There is so much going on around us, there is so much violence, and I thought this was something that could speak to people."

Two of the pieces - one based on the poem and another which focuses on the form of the dance - will also be improvised live on stage.

Maitra says: "Sometimes, you don't know if it's going to work or not, but I like taking the risk. In classical dance, you have a set piece and keep practising it, so you can get very comfortable with it, but I want to push the dancers a bit."

The dancer-choreographer also hopes the performance will be the first of many by the company which will bring about a change in the perception of Indian dance.

She says: "I want people to look at Indian dance not as something exotic or Oriental, but as a form which is relevant today and modern.

"Also, when people talk about contemporary dance, I don't want them to just think about the West, but also about what's happening now, in every culture."

This article was published on April 29 in The Straits Times.

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