Narthaki
News
Info
Featured
|     |
 Srishti - Nina Rajarani Dance Creations tours India with 'Sevens' Photos courtesy: Srishti January 25, 2025 Srishti - Nina Rajarani Dance Creations is a London-based dance company directed by Bharatanatyam dancer and choreographer Nina Rajarani. The company tours both its small-scale and mid-scale performance works with live music in the UK and internationally. The company is known to create work that maintains the authenticity of classical Indian dance and music while presenting these forms in innovative ways and within contemporary contexts. Nina Rajarani was awarded an MBE (Member of the British Empire) in the Queen's 2009 Birthday Honours, in recognition of Services to South Asian Dance. Srishti toured India in December 2024 with SEVENS, a triple bill of Bharatanatyam and Kathak, with live music, a unique presentation that fused the traditional and the contemporary. SEVENS explores the sacred, and sometimes sinful significance of the number seven. From playful and energetic, to soulful and contemplative, the presentation took audiences on an entertaining journey. In Seven Snags, a flirtatious courtship, the choreographic equivalent of an obstacle race, had the fast-paced ensemble in rhythm, full of exciting dynamics and laced with challenging cross rhythms. The abstract display of the fun and frolics of youth, the flirtatious quality of interactions, the freedom and liberties one takes with choices, are all inspired by the modern day phenomena of speed dating and dating apps.  Y Yadavan & Nina Rajarani Seven Steps, a duet by Nina Rajarani and vocalist/composer Y Yadavan, was based on 'saptapadi' (seven steps) - the most important rite of a Hindu marriage ceremony. Although an age-old ritual dating back to Vedic times, the vows remain relevant for anyone entering into a committed relationship. Seven Sins depicted the age-old concept of rights and wrongs and was performed by the full ensemble of dancers and musicians. This thought provoking, nuanced piece questions the very perception, and challenges what have become social norms. Representing an unfortunate response to difficulty and distress, Seven Sins considers that we are not evil at all, but in fact in all types of very human and difficult pain. Nina has been working with musicians for the last 20 years and they integrate into the choreography, a significant feature in Srishti productions. "I feel it enhances the collaboration between dance and music and puts the dancers and musicians on an equal footing," says Nina.  (Photo: K Krishnan Chakraborty) The inspiring production conceptualized and choreographed by Nina Rajarani, has an original music score by composer/vocalist Y Yadavan and Shammi Pithia (also multi-instrumentalist). Other credits include Lou Cope - Dramaturg, Chris Cuthbert - original lighting designer, Sandhya Raman - costume designer, B Charles - lighting engineer (India), Shanthosh Kannan - sound engineer (India). The dancers were Abirami Eswar, Mithun Gill, Suhani Dhanki Mody and Kirsten Newell. Kartik Raghunathan on violin and Mathusuthanan Satchithananthan on flute elevated the appeal of the production.  In their India tour, Srishti performed in Chennai, New Delhi, Kerala Kalamandalam, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Patna and Kolkata. Nina Rajarani shares her thoughts about the production and the India tour. What was your inspiration to come up with the concept of SEVENS? My composer / vocalist husband Yadavan and I had initially created a duet piece in 2016 based on saptapadi which is an important ritual in a Hindu wedding ceremony. In this, the bride and groom make seven promises to each other, and what attracted me to this concept was the fact that these seven promises are about very practical, day-to-day things that would be relevant to any era be it 100 years ago or be it in 100 years to come. I was keen to make a piece that had no barriers, cultural barriers or generation barriers, a piece that everybody could relate to. Although it's very classically based in terms of the vocabulary, the music and the costuming, it has an evergreen quality to it. But it is only 20 minutes long and I wanted to be able to tour a full-length work to venues. I decided to make a triple bill, so the other two pieces are ensemble works. I was looking for something that would contrast with the saptapadi piece which is a very pretty piece. So I chose to make a piece on the seven deadly sins and I was looking for an approach that was not going to be reprimanding in nature so I did a lot of reading and watching videos, watching films, and my husband came across a very simple video that talked about the seven sins as a manifestation of one's unmet needs, so this was the exact sort of thing I was looking for - something which was showing empathy towards people who were seen in society as committing sin. There's an underlying pain that one is suffering with that manifests outwardly as a sin - that's the approach I took for the choreography of this piece that makes the third piece in the triple bill. The first piece in the program is a very youthful, playful flirtatious piece which is all nritta but it is suggestive of an abstract idea. The dating culture of youth today, the freedom of choice they have, the expectation of being able to come in and out of relationships when it suits them, and I took inspiration from the fact that many young people these days use dating apps, speed dating - so that's all suggested in the piece from a very abstract angle. I then worked with a dramaturg Lou Cope who helped me to thrash out all the concepts and rationalise the structure of the triple bill - it was quite an interesting journey. It's too much detailed to go into here but that's how the whole triple bill came to being. How was SEVENS received during your India tour? Our India tour of Sevens was such a phenomenal experience. We had fantastic responses at all nine venues in eight cities. We were lucky to get either full or almost full auditoriums for every performance and standing ovations literally everywhere. I was pleasantly surprised, in particular at two venues where I was most nervous about presenting my work. First was at Kerala Kalamandalam which is a very traditional institution. I was a bit nervous about how the modern presentation of the work would be received, but we had a most overwhelming response by the audience there and this was extremely heartwarming. The other place was Patna. Bihar is known to be quite a conservative state so again I wasn't sure how we would be received. Once again, we were received with so much warmth and appreciation.  What was the challenge for Yadavan in composing the music for this production? Yadavan collaborated with Shammi Pithia to create the music for the first piece Seven Snags and final piece Seven Sins. Yadavan's training is wholly classical whereas Shammi is a self-taught musician who creates music which could be classified as world music. The challenge in this collaboration was to find a meeting point and common language when creating the music. On tour, the challenge we had was that the sound was devised as a recorded track alongside which three musicians played live. The balance between the live and recorded is very tricky to get right. The musicians are also mobile and a part of my choreography - they are characters in the story. This is a pioneering and trademark feature of my work. This has been my style of work for 20 years now and continues to evolve with each production, becoming more and more daring in this aspect. And now lots of others seem to be incorporating this idea in their work too! How did you manage to get the production to so many Indian cities, how easy or difficult was it, and the logistics of managing such a big tour. With regards to putting together this tour in India… oh my goodness, it was an uphill task! It took me a whole year and maybe a little more to get the nine bookings that I achieved. In terms of managing the logistics of the tour, I pretty much did it all on my own as only I knew the details of everything. My admin staff in the UK were not involved in any of the tour bookings from the start nor the logistics. Whilst on tour, the company members all helped with final arrangements on the ground. They all could see that I was dealing with a lot and so kindly helped with whatever they could take on. On that note, I would like to mention my team. We were a team of 10 people, three musicians, four dancers, light engineer, sound engineer and me - 10 of us on the road for 3 weeks across India. We were like a family. They were my dream team. I am blessed to have had each and every one of them as a part of the tour. They all put their heart and soul into the tour and credit goes to them all for making this tour the rocking success it was.  (Photo: VB Suresh) Any future shows of SEVENS? Sevens first toured the UK in Autumn 2021 and all of 2022. Now it toured India in Dec 2024 and we will be touring it in the UK again throughout 2025. |
