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Pickle Factory presents
HOLDING SPACE: Season 5
February 3 - March 9, 2025 India


January 29, 2025

Holding Space: Pickle Factory Season 5 is a call to action and an invitation to revisit what we stand for through the spaces we imagine, birth and experience together:
  • physical and philosophical spaces
  • spaces of hope and faith
  • plural and inclusive spaces
  • personal spaces for our bodies, souls and entire selves
  • spaces that foreground the politics of kindness
  • fleeting yet deep and diverse aesthetic spaces
  • spaces of collective nurture, healing, possibility and growth
Such spaces are fragile and vulnerable, in constant need of protection - but they are also spaces that must vigorously reclaim their validity and visibility. Holding space often requires extraordinary acts of courage, bravery, and love. What holds us back from foregrounding them with more determination and belief? How do we hold our course when we do not know what the future holds?

In a scenario where we are constantly being asked to be faster, higher, stronger, better - often to the detriment of ourselves, our societies, our ecologies, and our planet - Pickle Factory Season 5 suggests we pause and hold space with and for each other, and the world we can actually grow into. With gentleness, with grace, with generosity, with gusto.

SCHEDULE: Kolkata

Week 1 - 3 to 9 February 2025 | Holding POWER
Pickle Factory presents HOLDING SPACE: Season 5
1. Shoot the Cameraman by As We Are, Luxembourg

7 February | 7 pm | G.D. Birla Sabhagar
Live performance with live projection that plays with audience's perception what is taking place on stage.

Pickle Factory presents HOLDING SPACE: Season 5
2. Urmila by Adishakti, Auroville
8 February | 7 pm | G.D. Birla Sabhagar
Exploring questions of consent, agency and approval through the story of Urmila in the Ramayana

Week 2 - 17 to 23 Feb 2025 | Holding PEOPLE
Pickle Factory presents HOLDING SPACE: Season 5
1. After All by Solene Weinachter, Scotland

21 February | 7 pm | Alipore Museum
Melds dance, comedy, storytelling and theatre to address our relationship with death, dying and loss

Pickle Factory presents HOLDING SPACE: Season 5
2. Stilling by Padmini Chettur, Chennai
22 February | 7 pm | Alipore Museum
A choreographic study of the point where contradiction, disjointedness and interconnectedness meet in the body

Pickle Factory presents HOLDING SPACE: Season 5
3. Ef_femininity by a gender-diverse ensemble of performers from Switzerland and India, led by Marcel Schwald & Chris Leuenberger
23 February | 7 pm | Alipore Museum
Documentary dance, examining concepts of femininity, hyper-femininity, effeminacy. What is femininity and who owns it?

Week 3 - 3 to 9 March 2025 | Holding MAGIC
Pickle Factory presents HOLDING SPACE: Season 5
1. Can You Read My Body? by tanzbar_bremen, Germany and India

8 March | 7 pm | Alipore Museum
A sensual dance experience about the presence and absence of different bodies in space and the topic of belonging performed by a diverse group of dancers from with and without disabilities

Pickle Factory presents HOLDING SPACE: Season 5
2.Shaiva Koothu by Kapila Venu, Irinjalakuda
9 March | 7 pm | Alipore Museum
A groundbreaking work pushing the boundaries of Koodiyattam using a Tamizh text
Performances at Alipore Museum, other engagements elsewhere

SCHEDULE: India Tour

1.Shoot the Cameraman by As We Are, Luxembourg
Live performance with live projection that plays with audience's perception what is taking place on stage
2 Feb 2025 | Ahmedabad | 8:30 pm | Natarani Amphitheatre
9 Feb 2025 | Bangalore | 6:30pm | Prestige Srihari Khoday Centre for the Performing Arts
14 Feb 2025 | Delhi | 6:30pm | British Council Theatre
16 Feb 2025 | Mumbai | 7pm | NCPA

2. After All by Solene Weinachter, Scotland
Melds dance, comedy, storytelling and theatre to address our relationship with death, dying and loss
15 Feb 2025 | Delhi | 7 pm | British Council Theatre
23 Feb 2025 | Ahmedabad | 8:30 pm | Natarani Amphitheatre

3.Can You Read My Body? by tanzbar_bremen, a diverse ensemble of dancers from India and Germany with mixed abilities on a choreographic journey
Open Rehearsals: Delhi | Bangalore

Pickle Factory presents HOLDING SPACE: Season 5

Week One | Holding POWER:

We open the season reflecting upon the dynamics of power that we live with and around.

SHOOT THE CAMERAMAN: Set up by Baptiste Hilbert & Catarina Barbosa, As We Are is a dance company whose inspiration comes from contemporary social matters mainly related to the new behaviors created by the digital age. They aim to create new places of movement by combining choreographic art and latest technological innovation to reveal ourselves as we are. They believe that exchanging daily with others is essential to nurture their creativity and share these ideas. And so we have curated a week of varied engagements for them along with our many amazing partners.

URMILA: Founded by Veenapani Chawla in 1981, Adishakti believes that moving past disciplines out of their original contexts can reveal new, previously unrecognized elements. They view the contemporary performer as a critical interpreter who reexamines and expands upon traditional forms and stories. Their work spans both intercultural and intra-cultural spaces based on the subtle interconnectedness among diverse peoples, places, and knowledge systems, and engages with multiple disciplines. Adishakti productions vividly bring together dance, movement and emotional craft, integrated into one performance language.

Pickle Factory presents HOLDING SPACE: Season 5

Week Two | Holding PEOPLE:

We continue holding space with a special focus on the communities we build.

AFTER ALL: Solène Weinachter is a freelance dancer and choreographer. Her artistic practice is rooted in the intersection between dance, theatre, story telling, humour and what could appear as uncomfortable conversations. Her interest as a performer is rooted in the connection with the audience.

EF_FEMININITY: Chris Leuenberger and Marcel Schwald from Switzerland hold space for people exceeding binary constraints and questioning gender norms. Their artistic practices of Documentary Dance Performances aims to interweave elements of journalism and dance, shedding light on personal stories by means of movement and text. Both of them have always been fascinated by the traits attributed to the female gender - especially when those are practiced for self-empowerment and as a political statement. They have collaborated with the radio journalist Shilok Mukkati, the actress Living Smile Vidya and the choreographer Diya Naidu - to tell their stories rooted in different assumptions about gender in India.

STILLING: Padmini Chettur engages with audiences in Kolkata through various media. Through an installation, a solo performance, a learning program and her ensemble piece, explore how Chettur has defined her own choreographic idiom—minimalist, abstract and formal—stripping movement down to an essential, anatomical investigation, prioritising a sense of tension over emotion.

Pickle Factory presents HOLDING SPACE: Season 5

Week Three | Holding MAGIC:

As we draw the curtains to our fifth season, we close with the enchanting magic of tanzbar_bremen and Kapila Venu.

CAN YOU READ MY BODY?: tanzbar_bremen aims to make art and culture widely accessible. For over 15 years, the organisation has fostered inclusive collaborations among diverse professionals, creating dance performances, workshops, and educational programs. Based in Bremen, it offers training and hosts performances locally and internationally.

SHAIVA KOOTHU: Kapila Venu is a practitioner of Kutiyattam, one of the oldest living theatre traditions in the world, from Kerala, India. She is also a practitioner of Mohiniyattam dance, which she learned from her mother Guru Nirmala Paniker. For more than two decades, she has travelled the world performing, teaching, and giving workshops on Kutiyattam.

Info: picklefactory.in

Contact: Ahon Gooptu
Marketing Manager | Pickle Factory Dance Foundation
marketing.picklefactory@gmail.com | +91 98318 18990


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