Digging Deeper: Playfulness in the Round
Writer-in-Residence, Shivani Joshi, recounts Nova Dance’s excerpt performance of Svāhā! this past March:
The Nova Dance Rock ‘n’ Roll aesthetic permeates a Svāhā! recitation in their performance for the Theatre Centre’s 10 for 10 Launch Party in March, 2024.
Nova Bhattacharya’s Svāhā! recitation functions as a microcosm of the whole, expanding and contracting choreographic elements of the full performance in each iteration. Her playfulness in re-creating elements of the performance is part of the fun, keeping the dancers engaged with new points of connection within the work. She shifts our attention to new places, re-aligning what we know, and offering a challenge to renew our relationship with each version of the piece.
We come together from all directions, moving through the crowd, catching each other’s eyes. In the centre, Sukruti, Candace, Nidhi, and I hold corners of the spotlight in towards the centre as other dancers find us through the empty spaces in the audience. The Theatre Centre has become a fabulous room with each corner offering a taste, a sound, a swipe of glitter, and a drink. The lights, glamour, and glitz bounce off our silver and black rockstar attire, with chunky black boots to match. In the middle, we hold a strong centre, anchoring the dancers who come towards us.
Being immersed in the process of creation as the writer-in-residence offers me a lens with which to explore Nova’s creation process. I see her moving around the room, watching the performance from every corner, ensuring that each and every vantage point offers something unique and interesting. She gets up on a chair to see us from above. I observe her gaze, trying to find out what she is seeing through the changes that we make in each round of the choreography.
In rehearsal, Nova shifts us all into new directions, re-imagining the proscenium performance in the round. To me, it feels like a recreation of a grid formation from Svāhā!, a manipulation of section featuring a large sequence of dancers moving around the stage, condensed to our eyes as we face one another and the audience, playing with the direction of our gaze as we stand underneath a decked out chandelier and spotlight.
As we begin the recitation, there are those who stay still and those who are shifted by our voices. Nova describes this to me as ‘point and counterpoint’, another play on her choreographic aesthetic. The deconstruction of the image begins as an activity of solidarity, all of us reciting together, held tight by the timing, until one by one, we begin to bend. We soften the straight lines we create; melting down, and then snapping back into ourselves.
Nova sees us as fluid. We come and go into these roles as dancers and as members of the company. Like the grid, we create a complex and interesting network of artists who move in and out of the company’s activities, finding ways to lighten the load off of each other. Yes somehow, we still remain cohesive, orbiting the same values and practices, in and around Nova’s work….
We watch the audience take in each image, finding different collages of our faces assembled together based on where they stand around us. Performing in the round allows for each performer to choose who they interact with, and it offers the variety of shapes and perspectives to radiate out from the centre of the room. In some sections, we break the solid mass of our formation, dipping out to wave at the audience, and to dance with them. Nova’s composition creates space for us to dance with each other at the end. In the final moment of the piece we all rotate our grid together, dancing, vibing, and enjoying the transformation out of our performance and into humanity, segueing into a giant dance party with all the attendees of the fundraiser!