Around 20 people sit along the walls of a basement room that functions as a dance studio in a quiet Delhi neighbourhood. They look on as dancer Veena Basavarajaiah, who is trained in Bharatnatyam, Kalaripayattu and Western classical ballet, moves to the pulse of a metronome, a drum and a Tibetan prayer bell. All through her 10-minute dance piece, titled Maya tatam idam sarvam jagat, she stays within a 2m-wide circle marked out with tiny red bulbs. The Bhagvad Gita-inspired piece is spectacular, but Basavarajaiah’s mentors and facilitators at Gati’s dance residency programme find it much too conventional. With only three weeks left at the time for the final performance, they ask her to strip it of structure and see where it goes. “It’s too clean,” one of them says, while another adds, “If you perfect this, we’ve had it.”
Fluid grace: Choreographer Swati Mohan develops her Kabir-inspired piece Doha with partner Sangeet. Harikrishna Katragadda / Mint
Gati is a Delhi-based non-profit organization that has been working as a support network for dancers for two years. Its novel programme, Gati Summer Dance Residency 2009, has been designed as a research laboratory for dance. Over July and August, three emerging choreographers— Veena Basavarajaiah (27), Manola K. Gayatri (28) and Swati Mohan (32)—have been mentored by eminent dance and theatre personalities to find new idioms in contemporary dance and movement. One of the mentors, thespian Maya K. Rao, says that while picking participants she and the other mentors (Bharatnatyam exponent Navtej Johar; theatre personality Zuleikha Choudhary) looked for those who were searching for something through dance; those who had the best questions and not necessarily those who were the best performers.
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Founded by dancers, the organization’s activities include conducting workshops in technique and choreography and an online resource for dancers—www.gatidance.com. The residency is Gati’s latest venture, the first instalment of an annual eight-week programme that will provide financial support, mentoring, workshops, rehearsal space and production assistance to emerging dance creators in the country.
Gati’s residency programme, like its other activities, is funded by an assorted list of supporters that range from embassies to national arts organizations and corporations. The list includes Max Mueller Bhavan, the French Embassy, India Habitat Centre, Sangeet Natak Akademi, National School of Drama and Bharat Forge Limited.