When Annette Lede talks about her discovery of India, especially dance and Kathakali, her face lights up. An artist, choreographer and director, Annette kept returning to India to learn and hone her skills as a Kathakali dancer and actor.
More than four decades after her first visit to India in 1975, the dancer-choreographer has penned a book, contemporary dance in india today,
“While traveling with my productions, I came across Indian practitioners of contemporary dance who have grown and developed their own aesthetics,” she says during a conversation at Hotel Residency Tower in Thiruvananthapuram.
He found that along with the ancient classical performing arts, there were many practitioners of contemporary dance on the Indian stage.
However, Annette found that while classical dance and Bollywood were popular in France, contemporary dance in India was largely unknown to many.
In 2010, Annette was researching contemporary theater in India and translated plays by young theater practitioners into French. He also contributed an article on contemporary dance in a special issue of theater public, a French magazine dedicated to the Indian contemporary dance scene, in 2016. “It encouraged me to study contemporary dance more extensively. In collaboration with the Center National de la Danse un Paris, I traveled to India in 2017 and 2019,” she says.
Book by Annette Lede | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
Talking about the book, the end product of two years of extensive travel, research and conversations, she says the work provides a bird’s-eye view through the words of practitioners of contemporary dance in India.
In her book showing the places she visited on a map of India, she states that she traveled across India to meet and interview leading contemporary dancers such as Anita Ratnam, Malavika Sarukkai, Kumudini Lakhia, Mallika Sarabhai, Navtej 10 places visited. Johar, Jayachandran Palazzi etc.
Annette explains: “The late Chandralekha was one of the pioneers of contemporary dance. Questioning the dogma, rigidity and religiosity in which Bharatanatyam was often confined, she challenged existing styles of performance and became free to come up with her own choreography, which combined the martial art form of Kalaripayattu, her feminist ideas and new subjects mixed with Kalaripayattu. Movement grammar of Bharatanatyam.
salute to the pioneers
Annette’s bilingual book in English and French pays tribute to early pioneers like Uday Shankar, Mrinalini Sarabhai, Astad Debu and Kumudini Lakhia who innovated with classically inspired choreography and broke out of their artistic framework by choosing new . Theme and creative ways to present it.
Dancer-choreographer Annette Lede | Photo credit: Saraswathi Nagarajan
Her book is a ready reckoner for anyone trying to understand the platform of contemporary dance that embraces politics, feminism and individualism. It features interviews, topics chosen by the dancers, their creative processes, funding, and the organizations and venues that support such performances. Of all the interviews, she says the one with the veteran Kumudini bridged the two eras as she belonged to a senior generation of classical dancers who gave Indian dance a new performative language.
love for kathakali
Annette returned to India in 1978 to learn Bharatanatyam and Tamil. However, it was Kathakali that found a permanent place in his heart. She moved to Kerala and went on to learn Kathakali under the late maestro Keezpadam Kumaran Nair at Sadanam.
In 1989, he began producing his own productions that combined the grammar and dynamics of Kathakali with new themes and developed a modern language of movement. He has ten constructions which were done in India and France.
“In India, artistes are expected to keep alive the tradition and tradition of their gurus. Yet many artists have evolved and developed their own productions. In doing so he also had to challenge the mindset of the people around him and himself. It was a common feature that all the dancers I spoke to touched upon when talking about their creative journeys,” she says.
Annette diligently videotaped the interviews to document them and all interviews are posted online at Narthaki.com. Later, a video was made with Cyrille Larrieu to come up with a visual documentation of his study of contemporary dance. She says, “The film takes us to symbolic spaces across the vast subcontinent, where movement and dance are questioned. We discover some of the faces engaged in the renewal of traditions and artists, a new generation open to the world and its techniques.” Huh… “
The lockdown delayed the making of the book, but not the documentation. The book, published by Goyal, was released on January 5 at the Alliance Francaise de Trivandrum (AFT) in the city and the film was also screened.
The film will also be screened at AFT in Chennai and Bengaluru.