An Esplanade Co-Commission
Aditi Mangaldas (India)

What is it about female sexual desire that so irks society? It appears that this question is posed by social scientists, journalists, activists, students, by the media, by artists and performers in every decade in various forms. But the echoed silence demands the question to be posed again—the resonances of choreographer Aditi Mangaldas’ tatkaar (footwork) pushes the question towards new layers with her solo work FORBIDDEN.

The contemporary kathak choreographer uses the Indian classical dance form kathak and its vocabulary to generate notions of desire, tension, suffocation and release. But she also plays with kathak’s rules, her practice thus finding its way into this collection Pathbreakers in Dance. Her arms don’t always extend outward like a nayika (the female heroine in Indian classical dance dramas) awaiting her lover. They remain curved towards her own body and her fingers bent in claws. Her hands move in swift jerking motions to touch her face, neck, mouth, breast, thighs, belly. The pace of the footwork and the sounds of the ghungru (anklets) on her feet—as they speed up or slowly die away—hint at the intensity of the effort to hold on to, accept and express one’s desire. The strings of ghungru she plays with perform changing roles—now they are shackles she discards, later they are adornments that she drapes on her body, at one point they are symbols of sexual exploration and arousal.

Mangaldas is not restricted within the oeuvre of kathak for this choreographic expression. She uses influences from martial arts with a wide stance and a square seated body that appears to bloom the seed of danced rage. Her flirtation with perspectives from belly dance, brings different attention to her torso and hips. Here her face is covered with a soft cloth and therefore can no more be read for emotional expression as it is kathak.

The set design remains sparse, but the changing light designed by Michael Hulls brings insinuations of soft white carpets and parched cracked sand, of strict frames and boundaries, of the dissolving of these walls, of notions of purity and desire, of the skin and of the vulva.

Concept, Choreography and Performance: Aditi Mangaldas
Dramaturge: Farooq Chaudhry
Light Design: Michael Hulls
Music Composition: Nicki Wells
Costume Design: Kimie Nakano
Mentor: Morag Deyes
Commissioned by: Aditi Mangaldas Dance Company – The Drishtikon Dance Foundation
Co-Commissioned by: Sadler’s Wells, London; National Centre for The Performing Arts, Mumbai; Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay, Singapore
Supported by: Dance City, Newcastle and Rajika Puri, USA

An Esplanade Commission & Co-Production
Co-produced by TPAM – Performing Arts Meeting in Yokohama and Taipei Performing Arts Center
Pichet Klunchun Dance Company (Thailand)

In No. 60, choreographer Pichet Klunchun engages with the classical dance form Thai khon, while reaching into a creative impulse and offering a tool to demystify the form. The performance comes from Klunchun’s two-decades-long analytical research of the 59 poses in the Thai ‘Theppanom’ canon which led him to glean six key principles that he finds to make the underlying grammar of khon.

Exploring a contemporary approach, particularly with traditional or classical forms, is a slippery manoeuvre. Often, movement vocabularies from American or European contemporary dance, are merged into a traditional form to create a fusion potpourri that is declared “contemporary”. While this remains tricky territory with no right answer, one may read No. 60 to have found an evocative vein that remains in the world of khon — thereby being an apt work to place in the series Pathbreakers in Dance.

In its contemporary approach, No. 60 acknowledges the labour and pain of the khon dancing body when the dancers pull up knee support bands on stage. In some moments, khon’s principles of flow, synchronicity, circles and curves is explored by the dancers by letting go of the solid grounding of the feet. Instead they attempt it now, by connecting to the floor with their hands.

Importantly, however, Klunchun unabashedly names his work No. 60, in dialogue with the traditional repertoire to extend its limits. He pushes against and disregards the forces that curtail instinct and creativity with khon, but remains immersed in the practice of the classical form. The 60th pose of khon hasn’t yet been found or formalised. Klunchun’s research and the performance No. 60 propose a framework for an open intuitive creation with the form.

Artistic Director, Choreographer & Dancer: Pichet Klunchun
Dancer: Kornkarn Rungsawang
CG Artist: Jaturakorn Pinpech
Music & Sound Artist: Zai Tang
Set Concept & Lighting Designer: Ray Tseng
Dramaturge: Tang Fu Kuen
Lighting Executor: Asako Miura
Producer & Company Manager: Sojirat Singholka
Production/Stage Manager: Cindy Yeong

Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan (Taiwan)
Commissioned by National Performing Arts Center – National Theater & Concert Hall, Taipei

As a child in the 1980s, Cloud Gate Artistic Director Cheng Tsung-lung would contribute to the family business by helping his father sell slippers on the streets of Bangka/Wanhua, the oldest district of Taipei. Bangka/Wanhua was known for its vibrantly diverse and bustling street scene that embraced religious and secular life, rich and poor, work and play, legal and illegal activities.

The young Cheng was transfixed by his mother’s accounts of the legendary 1960s street artist and storyteller known as Thirteen Tongues who had adopted Bangka/Wanhua for his informal stage. It was said that Thirteen Tongues could conjure up all the Bangka/Wanhua characters—high and low born, sacred and profane, men and women—in the most vivid, dramatic and fluently imaginative narratives. Thirty years on Cheng’s fascination for Thirteen Tongues became his inspiration as he transformed his childhood memories into dance.

Cloud Gate’s dancers, trained in meditation, qi gong, martial arts, modern dance and ballet, make their mastery evident with enigmatic movements that shift between floating and grounded, swift and steady, fluid and choppy, sharp and subtle. In the excerpts presented as part of Esplanade’s online screenings, the camera performs as an additional dancer, taking the audience to the heart of the movement. The music accompanying 13 Tongues ranges from Taiwanese folk songs to Taoist chant to electronica. The stage is awash with projections of brilliant colours, shapes and images, and the dancers gather, interact, separate and re-gather in a thrilling representation of the clamour of street life.

As the religious heritage of ancient Bangka/Wanhua fuses with the secular space it is today, so time appears to dissolve. The spirit realm and the human realm also coalesce as the audience is taken on an immersive journey—via imagination and storytelling that recalls the art of Thirteen Tongues—through centuries of human endeavour, behaviour and belief.

Choreography: Cheng Tsung-lung
Music: Lim Giong
Art Design: Ho Chia-hsing
Lighting Design: Shen Po-hung
Projection Design: Ethan Wang
Costume Design: Lin Bing-hao
Voice Coach: Tsai Pao-chang

Commission: National Performing Arts Center – National Theater & Concert Hall, Taipei

Akram Khan Company (United Kingdom)

With Until the Lions, celebrated dance artist and choreographer Akram Khan delves into the story of a fascinating character from the Mahabharata—Amba who later appears in the form of Shikhandi. Khan’s creation is inspired by the poetry collection of the same name penned by Karthika Nair, where she explores the epic tale from the perspective of marginalised women characters. This excerpt is from the archival recording of the 2018 production at Esplanade.

Amba and her reincarnated transgender persona of Shikhandi are each pushed by a powerful raison d’être shaped by their society’s gender-based injustices. Their role in the Mahabharata revolves around the principle character of Bheeshma. However, the performance centres Amba and Shikhandi as characters that regain hold of their narrative. Driven by wrath and the desire for justice, they challenge the norms of society. They confront Bheeshma and compel him to reflect on his wrongdoing towards Amba in his final dying hours on the battlefield.

While rooted in Hindu mythology, the story is one of universal resonance revolving around love, betrayal and revenge. What comes across prominently though is the theme of steadfastness—Bheeshma is steadfast in his oath of celibacy, and Amba by her penance. The performers in Until the Lions reflect this. They dance together, magnetically close and in sync—yet drifting and yanked apart in their divergent paths. Drumbeats, claps and shouts drive the sonic pulse and embodied movements throughout the show.

The performance was created when Khan was crossing a certain threshold of age at 40 years and reconsidering the capacities of his body to fully accomplish the movement he envisioned in his choreographic mind. Until the Lions, which had its world premiere in 2016, is thus marked by transition: the choreographer’s own transition in age; Amba’s reincarnation and eventual gender transition to Shikhandi; the transition of knowledge to wisdom and the queering of narrative timelines.

Director / Choreographer: Akram Khan
Narrative Concept/Scenario/Text: Karthika Naïr
Visual Design: Tim Yip
Lighting Design: Michael Hulls
Original Music Score composed by Vincenzo Lamagna, in collaboration with Sohini Alam, David Azurza, Yaron Engler, Akram Khan, Joy Alpuerto Ritter
Dramaturg: Ruth Little
Assistant Director: Sasha Milavic Davies
Assistant Choreographer: Jose Agudo
Voice-over: Kathryn Hunter
Dancers: Ching-Ying Chien, Joy Alpuerto Ritter, Rianto
Musicians: Sohini Alam, Joseph Ashwin, David Azurza, Yaron Engler