Category: Dance

On Tuesday at UMMA’s Helmut Stern Auditorium, Dr. Ananda Shankar Jayant performed three pieces of Indian classical dance. The first piece, performed in the bharatanatyam style of dance, was an interpretation of a segment of the life of Rama, an incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu. The second piece, performed in the kuchipudi style of dance, was a scene from the life of Krishna, another incarnation of Vishnu. The third piece, a bharatanatyam performance with influences from other classical dance styles, was a portrayal of nine different emotions: anger, fear, wonder, disgust, fear, compassion, valor, love, and peace. All three dances were set to music incorporating traditional Indian elements, including flute, violin, drums, cymbals, and vocals (in the first two dances, the vocals were prayers or stories corresponding to the dance, and in the third it was simply syllables, analogous to the Western do-re-mi).

Her performance was the first professional Indian classical dance performance I have seen before, and it was simply spectacular. There were two elements in particular that mesmerized me most: her impeccably timed choreography, and her beautiful facial expressions and body language. Her movements coincided precisely with the music: for example, at one point she portrayed a bow being strung and subsequently breaking. To convey this, she stamped her feet four times, corresponding with four percussive beats in the music, perfectly evoking the sound of snapping wood. I have never noticed that kind of parallelism in the bharatanatyam performances I have seen before, and experiencing that connection between the dance and the music brought another dimension to the performance.

Her body language and facial expressions were similarly eye-opening. Bharatanatyam is a very abstract dance and uses hand gestures to symbolize nouns. Though Dr. Jayant explained the story of each piece and demonstrated some of the key hand gestures before she began, her facial expressions were instrumental in my ability to follow the storyline. For example, the first piece involved a scene in which Rama’s father was forced to send Rama and his brother to fight demons—her brokenhearted face was more touching than any other sorrowful scene I’ve ever seen enacted, and made me want to cry. Similarly, the first piece also included a marriage scene, during which she was portraying two characters at once: Rama and his wife Sita. She gracefully shifted from one persona to another, giving Sita demureness and rapture by keeping her eyes lowered and her head turned to one side, while giving Rama confidence and boldness by keeping her back erect and stance tall.

I could not believe how expressive the performance was. During the brief Q&A session after her performance, during which she talked about everything from the amount of time she spends practicing to her opinion on the role of politics in art, I asked her if she had choreographed all three pieces herself, and she told me she had. This explained the perfect alignment of the music and the choreography as well as the accessibility of her body language, and it only made me more awestruck at her thoughtfulness and thorough attention to detail. It was a fantastic performance, and I was simply bedazzled throughout.

Momentum, which showed Thursday through Sunday of last week, was a showcase concert from the University of Michigan’s dance department. The program consisted of four works: Big Weather, Cheating, Lying, Stealing, Goodbye to Wayward Flesh, and City of Rain, choreographed by various members of the Department of Dance faculty and guest choreographer Camille A. Brown.

The first piece, Big Weather by choreographer Peter Sparling, was a commentary on climate change. It was urgent, compact, and intense, much like its soundtrack: Michael Gordon’s “Timber,” a heavily-layered percussion piece. Onstage, the dancers were in a constant state of emergency and scrambling to find their way out. The stage was busy with groups of dancers in different sections of the stage delivering expansive, synchronized movements, occasionally crossing through each other’s space with frantic energy. The choreography and accompanying video was geometric and entrancing.

The earthy color scheme of this piece contrasted starkly with the bright lights and grey suits of the next piece, Bill DeYoung’s Cheating, Lying, Stealing, which explored toxic office dynamics. The soundtrack was David Lang’s forceful, jolting composition of the same title. This choreography had more of a narrative, with cliques of dancers interacting with each other in derogatory gestures. Their movements were swooping and aggressive. I admired the consistent, fiery energy with which they portrayed the narrative.

The quirkiest piece on the program was Amy Chavasse’s Goodbye to Wayward Flesh. The stage was set up with a mannequin duct-taped to a wall, a bright red, winding staircase, and a life-sized llama watching a TV with static. The costumes (Jean Luc Deladurantaye) and soundtrack (Simon Alexander-Adams)  both effectively reflected the choreography’s playfulness. For the majority of the piece, a large ensemble of dancers were onstage and interacting with each other with unpredictable, whimsical movements. The piece closed with a lone dancer (Paula Modafferi) jumping up and down, eventually realizing she had been abandoned by the rest of the dancers, and then climbing up the red staircase while removing her costume.

The show ended on a hopeful note with Camille A. Brown’s City of Rain. The work featured a blue color scheme, an evocative soundtrack by John Melville Pratt, and costumes with soft outlines. The dancers bloomed with the music, slowly emerging and increasing the scale of their movement. The choreography flowed seamlessly from a timid beginning to a triumphant finale.

The diversity of Momentum was remarkable; a wide variety of colors, music, and themes were represented, and the intricate choreography was performed with strong conviction by the students of the dance department.