"One micro movement, one macro movement, my focus and my breath..." Jayachandran Palazhy’s makes a graceful streak, a simple movement of undeniable power, all while he sits, legs crossed, in his Wilson Garden office. Jay, dancer extraordinaire and founder, Attakkalari, can leave any audience spellbound when he gets up on stage. Few people know, however, that speaking with him can produce much the same effect. “As Francis Bacon said, I'm like a mortar, grind it all together and make something new.” Over the next hour, he discusses Bacon and James Joyce, Van Gogh, John Cage and Tarkovsky, bringing them all seamlessly back to his first love: dance. It is a multi-faceted rigour that seeps into every aspect of Attakkalari. Dancers conduct extensive research and introspection to create a series of movements that Jay then stitches together to make a whole. “It’s challenging at times but hugely rewarding as well.” Body Matters Move to Transform, a festival by Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts, in collaboration with Max Mueller Bhavan, will bring dancers from across the world and experts from various fields together in a single platform. Performances by students graduating from their diploma course and by the Attakkalari Dance Company will be a sight to behold, as empirical knowledge and debate is brought to the table alongside.
The Renaissance
Today, Jay Palazhy, the man who put Indian contemporary dance and thereby, the city on the global map, stands on the brink of a whole new world. "Today, you have parents bringing their children to dance classes and setting up studios for them at home," Jay remarks. "It's an individual effort, however, what I would like to see is collective will." The power of the collective is one of the bedrocks of contemporary dance, as life is deconstructed, put back together and translated into the medium of physical movement. That's also the statement Jay hopes to make through the Body Matters Festival, a four day event replete with performances by students, the Attakkalari Dance Company, master classes and panel discussions. "It's time we brought dance to mainstream education," Jay says. "It is a change we are ready to see."
A dancer’s journey:
He only took his first dance class, however in University, putting pocket money aside to fund his classes. "I was the only boy there and people would watch from outside, wondering what I was doing with a group of girls." He stuck with it regardless: "I wonder how I did it. Maybe I have a madness in me, an inner calling which says, this is the only thing for you." He spent the next few years in Chennai, a strange city, learning Bharat natyam, while his parents back home believed happily that their son was studying Computer Science.
"I had my fatal attraction, I knew I could give up anything else. Today, we have a much greater awareness, more support for young people in the arts."
Movement aesthetics in education
Teachers, educators, decision makers and stakeholders will come together over the weekend, integrating thought, empirical knowledge, pedagogy and art. "The body is the final frontier, a thing to protect, possess cherish," says Jay. "it's being recognised scientifically, which makes it that much more important to have movement arts and dance, in particular, in mainstream education." Strengthened neural functions, better memory, reduced risk of diseases like dementia, sharpening cognitive skills are some of the benefits of dance, says a paper on Dancing and the Brain, published by Harvard University. "Contemporary dance in particular is a means of knowledge production, not just the understanding of existing information. Like a child learning multiplication tables for the first time, it's a discovery." he explains.
Are we ready?
"Have you paused to look at our city roads," Jay asks, with a sudden twinkle. "Chaos. A dancer would never go about things in that way. We have better kinesthetics, better spatial intelligence."Society, however, has little room for a dedicated pursuit of the arts. Few people have the time and incentive to throw themselves into a wholehearted study of a classical dance form or martial art, to find what Jay describes as "the ownership of movement." "When you deliberate contemporary realities and come up with movements by yourself, you own them. These are processed with the traditional languages, which helps the artist grow more rooted in his or her culture and heritage, but also remain open to the influences of the world. We need to kindle that interest in children." Help and support has poured in along the way, with educators like Maya Menon, psychiatrist Dr Sekhar Seshadri, artists and writers all expressing their solidarity to the cause. Writer U.R. Ananthamurthy, Jay recalls, despite his worsening health, wrote with trembling hands, a letter to the Chief Minister, requesting an allocation of land for contemporary dance. "It's time to take this to decision makers within the sector. Without the physical embodiment of knowledge, you remain alienated from it." Why should the richness of Indian culture remain restricted to the laurels of our forefathers? “We tell ourselves, we have the Taj Mahal, we have the Chidambaram Temple and all these wonderful places. So we can afford to produce rubbish.” Pausing politely to accommodate the laughter that follows this comment, he says, “What about us? What are we going to produce?
21st century art form
“It’s environmentally friendly,” he smiles. This is the era, says Jay, of what he calls the post-industrial digital human. As human beings grow more globalised and homoge nised in their perspectives, the extraordinary mix of heritage and contemporary influences that dance can bring continue to grow in importance. “Art and culture, dance in particular, can bring this evolution together. That’s what we’re here for, after all, if we were to stop evolving life simply wouldn’t be any fun!”
August 8
International Arts Education Summit: A day-long conference on the role of dance and movement arts education as a curricular or non curricular activity in schools.
Where: NGMA, 9.30 am
August 9
Dance Enhance Workshop
Conducted by Ronja Nadler, dancer/ choreographer from Centre for Contemporary Ddance, Cologne.
August 9 and 10,3 pm
Attakkalari
AUGUST 10
Bhinna Vinyasa
Attakkalari Dance Company presents the enhanced version of its acclaimed production Bhinna Vinyassa with music composed by Martin Lutz.
When: August 10, 6.30 pm
Where: Chowdiah Hall
