Review - With moving human body in space From: The Platform becomes theatre

With moving human body in space From: The Platform becomes theatre
- Dr. S.D. Desai
e-mail: sureshmrudula@gmail.com

November 28, 2019

Even before viewers enter leisurely and occupy the seats in the semicircular auditorium of Natarani for From: The Platform on November 23, the performers are all - I count 12 of them - there on the stage barely seen in the light that spreads up to it from the auditorium. They are a cross-section of people at a public place as in a still photograph skillfully caught by the camera, poised to move. As the lights come on them and faint sounds creep in, you realize they - Singapore based dance theatre group Chowk's performers - are supposed to be people on a railway platform caught in the midst of movement.

It is a motley crowd, a slice of busy urban life, put into a frame engagingly choreographed. You take time to identify each of them - a vendor with a basket of flowers, a young mother holding a baby, young men with backpacks, shapely women, a woman with painted lips, a writer jotting down observations probably, a sweeper with a broom in hand, an unskilled worker with a heavy load on his back. The initial movement is imperceptible. As in a continuing movement, a heel is raised in slow motion, a hand moves forward, the face turns, eyes look up, and so on.

Though so many, they are most notably not in communication - neither verbally nor without words in the first half. Each of them belongs to the crowd and is yet an individual, unconcerned about others, preoccupied with their own thoughts. The eyes are intent, the visage is clearly defined, the feet poised and the body revealing identity. It is the viewers who constantly remain engaged in figuring out what each move in slow motion suggests. It is an unintended live illustration of "All the world's a stage / And all the men and women in it merely players."

In the stylized movement, light as air, the still looks at times meet each other and connect also with the viewers. They get interactive almost unnoticed. The flower girl, for example, turns to the heavily laden worker and just touches his load with empathy. She also offers flowers to one, who only looks at them. All this is pretty engaging and striking. The second half assumes momentum and captures street scenes with a great variety of action.

Hand-pulled rickshaws, a carriage, a sneezing somebody, a fastidious young woman with an umbrella, a man and a woman getting cozy, varying strides, a boozed man, a girl skipping rope, a young woman breaking into a jig, everyone at the right end jumping over an obstacle shrieking. There is a series of images where everyone turns the neck slowly to look back, notices a hazard chasing that prompts a frenzied run. Earlier there was an illusion of two trains running in opposite directions. If you have the eye for it, there is so much of drama integral to routine life.

To put it on stage though through human body, you need the talent and pluck as Raka Maitra has got. She has colleagues adept at lights and sound effects to support. Not all those on stage seem to be dancers, nor are all actors. The performance does not have a text, nor does it have a linear narrative. She is known to be an accomplished Odissi dancer and to have had training in Chhau as well. There are glimpses of them. From: The Platforrm reflects her desire to break free of the classical dance format and experiment with an innovative contemporary form. She acknowledges the influence of Peter Handke on her form. "I can take any empty space and call it a stage," Peter Brook said. Raka Maitra takes the space with people on it and calls it theatre.

Dr. S.D. Desai, a professor of English, has been a Performing Arts Critic for many years. Among the dance journals he has contributed to are Narthaki, Sruti, Nartanam and Attendance. His books have been published by Gujarat Sahitya Academy, Oxford University Press and Rupa. After 30 years with a national English daily, he is now a freelance art writer.