Day 3: Art Share 2022 Program

Talin Subbaraya

Bengaluru, India

Talin Subbaraya grapples with movement, theatre and writing. He was a part of G5A Foundation and Soho Theatre's collaborative script writing program,"Writer's Lab Mumbai". He was also a resident artist at Smarter Digital Realities, a residency curated by Padmini Ray Murray and produced by Sandbox Collective and Goethe Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, Bangalore. He started learning Bharatanatyam from Priyamvada Murali and currently explores the form with Priyanka Chandrasekhar in Bangalore. Talin's current practice of the arts is an attempt to find ways to tell stories from his personal lens, thus leading to experiments with the forms he practices. He is also exploring art facilitation with children.

PROGRAM NOTES:

An Unnamed Piece

The following segments are part of the piece I’m building as part of the grant. The piece is still unnamed. These are work in progress segments. The following notes coincide with the 4 different segments of the video. I’d suggest reading these after watching the sections. All the videos were shot and edited as part of a rehearsal by Niranjana Sajan, a friend, artist and social work professional.

Searching for ‘a’ Voice

This piece stemmed from an extremely anxious rehearsal. The insecurity that constantly invites itself into some rehearsals and this piece needed a vent. Thus, the anxiety that surrounded the rehearsal that day became a part of this piece. This piece also plays with my need to often unconsciously and consciously place myself in boxes. It also plays with a character I intend to bring back into the piece later, Doraemon, a childhood favorite cartoon, a wish giving robot.

This is the male washroom

Washrooms and I share a relationship. They’ve been spaces of exploring, asserting, playing and fearing gender. School washrooms feel cold, auditorium washrooms feel warm. It’s a strange relationship, I suppose. Washrooms became a part of this piece as I went back to exploring spaces that starkly brought gender before me. This piece of poetry and action was born from there.

Anger sits in a house with strong foundations

I want to relook and retell the story of Kalinga and Krishna through my piece. This urge comes from resonating with the snake. Kalinga and I aren’t very different beings in our experiences, I think. The violence that Kalinga faces for being who he is felt similar to my experience of being bullied as a child. Something that I for long did not acknowledge was the anger that I felt in my body. This piece was born out of an urge to acknowledge and sit with anger and to see what that could feel like and yield to.

Dancing with Kalinga

I wanted to imagine Kalinga dancing happily in the Yamuna. I felt like that would be a starting point to see what it means to reimagine a character. What would it feel like to dance with Kalinga? Could Kalinga have fun in the process of play? The piece was an exploration and imagination of what dancing with Kalinga could feel like.

Anjali Mehta

New York City, USA

Anjali Mehta, an NYC-based lawyer and dancer, strives to create movement(s), through dance and activism. She has been dancing since she was 5, training in Bharatanatyam, jazz, modern, musical theater, and martial arts. She is the Artistic Director of the Artivist's Studio and the director of “Descent”, an official selection at the Diversity in Cannes Short Film Showcase, the Jacksonville Dance-Film Festival, and the Experimental, Dance & Music Film Festival. Anjali was also nominated for Outstanding Performer at the 2021 Bessie Awards.

More info on www.anjalimehta.info

PROGRAM NOTES:

Nameless

Reflecting on the institutionalized and systematic violence against women perpetrated by our courts, our governments, and our communities, this piece uses the dance style of garba--a traditional community folk dance--to question our complicity in anonymizing and deflecting attention from the lived experiences and trauma of women. In particular, it reflects upon my own process of healing (or lack thereof), hiding behind a smile while trying desperately to cry out for help. Let us ask: what does each of us hide behind a mask?

Produced by The Artivist's Studio

Produced by Lion Party Films' Proma Khosla and Raashi Desai

Director of Photography / Editing by Raashi Desai

Diya Naidu

Bengaluru, India

Diya Naidu is an independent choreographer and dancer based in south India. Her primary practices are rooted in movement with contemporary dance, yoga, kalaripayattu and partner work being some of her biggest influences. Her work often involves embodied research over several years both with performers and community members via workshops. Some of these themes have been intimacy and touch, patriarchal penetration and more recently longing. She has worked with Attakkalari, Cie Gilles Jobin, Company Theatre - Mumbai, Chris Leuenberger productions and East Africa soul train among many organizations.

More info on www.diyanaidu.com

PROGRAM NOTES:

Suraiya is a country

We lost my grandmother Suraiya to Covid last year. Three years before this, I inexplicably started to record my conversations with this remarkable woman, who had experienced several tumultuous life events. Her stories talked about her three marriages, being Muslim in a Hindu country, children, cooking, Bengali soap operas, being married at thirteen, beloved grandchildren, her family’s exodus to Bangladesh, her suffering and her palpable joy. Her revelations invited personal and political histories in a most moving way. From the partition to the Naxal movement to the pandemic, from “Amitabh Bachchan betraying Jaya” to the “Chinese taking over the world”, she had experienced Indian/global histories first hand. The work seeks to personalize and democratize the telling of the story of our communities. Like a fortune teller, the piece says –” pick a number”. Instead of your future it proceeds to build chaotic and real narratives of the past. With equal part chance and equal part design, the viewers witness the construction of reality. Each show, a different one. Witnessed by community.

WE ARE NOW ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS FOR 2023!

The Unrehearsed Artist Residency Program aims to fund and support the creation of new dance work by artists who are often not represented in conventionally-funded spaces in the South Asian Dance industry. The program keeps care & developmental support front and center while working toward sharing a Final Work in Progress.

If you would like to nominate someone, please send us their name and info and we can reach out to them. The application deadline is November 15, 2022. For more information on the commitment and eligibility requirements of the program, please visit https://www.navadance.org/artist-residency-program.

Funders

Unrehearsed Artist Residency is created by Nava Dance Theatre, and is a part of the Unrehearsed Activism program, supported by the California Arts Council Impact Grant, San Francisco Arts Commission, Zellerbach Family Foundation and individual donors. Consider donating to keep this program going! All donations are tax deductible in the US.

NAVA DANCE THEATRE IS A 501(C)3 REGISTERED NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION.

Special thanks

We would like to thank those who supported this work through community engagement programs, being present for work-in-progress sharings, having 1:1 conversations with many artists, and advising on the direction of this program. We would like to especially thank ALL the artists in this years URP cohort, for being so open to process over product and really digging deep into their work.

URP Leadership

Program Director: Tanu Sreedharan

Program Manager: Uditha Thiagarajan