Nrityageet 34
I was in two minds whether to go. The last two years, I have left during the intermission.
The Shah family put on their 34th production. It was better than the 30th,31st, 32nd and 33rd. There is something to be celebrated that a family found a unique way to celebrate the 5 May - by putting on a dance production which was well supported by the population changed.
The Cultural Centre was 1/3 full tonight. It has been like that for a while. I don't know if the Bollywood imports for Sunday night are taking away from Nrityageet.
The stage looked nice at the beginning. The props of mountain, trees, two arches, and a projected image at the back. Except that they never moved the props even when the props were not appropriate for the dances, and the projected images were repeated so then became distractions.
Nrityageet is wonderful because they aim to have local content.. Guyanese dancers from all over and then treats like the Guyana Ramleela group. Something is wrong though in that the production does not hang together well.
The programme was projected on one wall. The second half however, the items did not flow so we were not sure. Russel Lancaster was MC.. great MC.. except of course he was not used all the time. It is not clear.. should there have been fillers of poetry or other items as they did one year?
It is not clear if there is a production team.. if one person is doing everything, then there are bound to be slips. How many Rajasthani folk dances do we need in a programme? Where are the local Indian folk dances.. one year Nrityageet brought a group from Better Hope.
Over the years, water has come to my eyes twice during Nrityageet performances.. in 1997 during their tribute to Cheddi, and another year during their opening sequence which depicted the persons coming to an unknown place.. I just thought of those who came with not much to make their lives. I remembered that Nrityageet did not do too much Bollywood but worked on interesting choreographies.. a friend from India in 2003 had found that the production embodied for him the experience he had after spending a year in Guyana.
Dr Shah-Roath has always done an opening poem and in a place where the descendants of Indian immigrants are performing less and less poetry, it is good that she keeps this up. It would have been good to find ways of having some more.. Except that tonight, it just did not work with reading from the laptop and it was not clear why the tassa drummer was needed with the music. There have been beautiful performances of poetry.. with no music, with a dancer moving, and I think once, with just a drummer.
Some of the dances were not too clear. Indian Hip Hop and Sugar and Spice.
The props and background images were not needed for some of the items. The lighting would have been enough. Something about cliche popped into mind watching one or two of the dances.
Now that we are in Guyana, we can imagine Kathak in the Savannah, or on Kaieteur.
It does not have to be in the backdrop of an Indian palace.
The Stop Abuse dance - the backdrop images started with Guyanese houses and then moved to pictures of abused women and children. These were not necessary. The dancer was expressive and the images at the back took away from the dancer.
It was beautiful listening to young Ashley Shah talk about her family history , and saying that next year, she and her younger cousin would be dancing. This continuity is important. The drive must be admired. However, there is need for rejuvenation.. to come back to Guyana.. no more Rajasthani folk dances.. tighten the programme.
Guyana is a wonderful place in that where nothing exists, we can be moved to create and the Shah family have done well. However, at the same time, Guyana is also a place where it is easy to become stagnant, where talent is difficult to nurture and the technical training is becoming less and less available. I only dance in my seat. I am no expert.
The Shah family put on their 34th production. It was better than the 30th,31st, 32nd and 33rd. There is something to be celebrated that a family found a unique way to celebrate the 5 May - by putting on a dance production which was well supported by the population changed.
The Cultural Centre was 1/3 full tonight. It has been like that for a while. I don't know if the Bollywood imports for Sunday night are taking away from Nrityageet.
The stage looked nice at the beginning. The props of mountain, trees, two arches, and a projected image at the back. Except that they never moved the props even when the props were not appropriate for the dances, and the projected images were repeated so then became distractions.
Nrityageet is wonderful because they aim to have local content.. Guyanese dancers from all over and then treats like the Guyana Ramleela group. Something is wrong though in that the production does not hang together well.
The programme was projected on one wall. The second half however, the items did not flow so we were not sure. Russel Lancaster was MC.. great MC.. except of course he was not used all the time. It is not clear.. should there have been fillers of poetry or other items as they did one year?
It is not clear if there is a production team.. if one person is doing everything, then there are bound to be slips. How many Rajasthani folk dances do we need in a programme? Where are the local Indian folk dances.. one year Nrityageet brought a group from Better Hope.
Over the years, water has come to my eyes twice during Nrityageet performances.. in 1997 during their tribute to Cheddi, and another year during their opening sequence which depicted the persons coming to an unknown place.. I just thought of those who came with not much to make their lives. I remembered that Nrityageet did not do too much Bollywood but worked on interesting choreographies.. a friend from India in 2003 had found that the production embodied for him the experience he had after spending a year in Guyana.
Dr Shah-Roath has always done an opening poem and in a place where the descendants of Indian immigrants are performing less and less poetry, it is good that she keeps this up. It would have been good to find ways of having some more.. Except that tonight, it just did not work with reading from the laptop and it was not clear why the tassa drummer was needed with the music. There have been beautiful performances of poetry.. with no music, with a dancer moving, and I think once, with just a drummer.
Some of the dances were not too clear. Indian Hip Hop and Sugar and Spice.
The props and background images were not needed for some of the items. The lighting would have been enough. Something about cliche popped into mind watching one or two of the dances.
Now that we are in Guyana, we can imagine Kathak in the Savannah, or on Kaieteur.
It does not have to be in the backdrop of an Indian palace.
The Stop Abuse dance - the backdrop images started with Guyanese houses and then moved to pictures of abused women and children. These were not necessary. The dancer was expressive and the images at the back took away from the dancer.
It was beautiful listening to young Ashley Shah talk about her family history , and saying that next year, she and her younger cousin would be dancing. This continuity is important. The drive must be admired. However, there is need for rejuvenation.. to come back to Guyana.. no more Rajasthani folk dances.. tighten the programme.
Guyana is a wonderful place in that where nothing exists, we can be moved to create and the Shah family have done well. However, at the same time, Guyana is also a place where it is easy to become stagnant, where talent is difficult to nurture and the technical training is becoming less and less available. I only dance in my seat. I am no expert.
I agree with your criticisms Vidya but I thought the show was mostly - disappointing, not to mention is came across to me as very racial. For starters, it was an unjustified and abhorrent stereotype to have only Afro-Guyanese dancers for the portrayal of Christianity, not to mention the choice of song and lack of refinement as portrayed by the the Hindus and Muslims and lets not forget it was half the time of both or those religious introductions. Following that The speaker,(whose name I cannot remember) made a statement that I found unnecessary , rude and it was altogether a fallacy " Indian people are the most tolerant" people you can come across. Given that this show seemed to propagate cultural diversity , that statement seemed insulting ? Following that there is Ashley's speech , and she was quite a speaker for such a young person so I must commend her. However, I am absolutely appalled by whom ever it was that wrote her speech for it was very prejudicial and ill researched. When mentioning the places our country gains it's heritage "India, China, Portugal and Europe" were in the line up but then somehow Africa was forgotten ? The other issue I have with her speech is one of an opinion I suppose, having studied Guyanese history, I found it unjustified that the speech mentions that the culture of the Indians was nurtured and cared for which is why it survived insinuating that other cultures weren't. This is unjust simply because the people before the Asians; the Africans were not allowed to preserve their culture, they were not allowed to keep their language or religion heck they weren't even allowed their family. To be quite honest I thought the best dances came from the National school of dance , I thought it was quite impressive that those girls knew kathak and were not ashamed to dance it. And that made my night !
ReplyDeleteWhy do you find every mention of anything positive about Indians to be an insult? Can't Indians be proud of preserving their culture and values or of being tolerant?
DeleteSeems we have the neo colonialist mentality of divisiveness thriving.
I certainly agree with you vid that Nrityageet 34 was far better than a couple of previous productions. I myself was guilty of previously leaving the show at intermission.
ReplyDeleteWhat I liked this year about the production were the "tarana" that were used for some of the kathak performances. They were great. One of the most popular taranas composed by the late sitar genius, Pandit Ravi shankar was danced.I am not sure if they knew this.
What was quite evident for me in most of Ms shaw's kathak performances, with all due respect, for someone who was trained under the Jaipur kathak wisard, Guruji Durgalall, was that she was doing a few things over and over, such as chakradaar (spins) and just moving about the stage.
What about abhinaya?, she attempted at times
More emphasis should have been taken to get the translation of her songs, especially the thumri she danced so that she could have expressed it the songs better.
All and all, there were good signs of improvement for me.