Svāhā! On the Land - Travel Journal: Tour to St. John’s, NL
Writer-in-Residence, Judy Luo, joined Nova Dance on tour in Newfounland and shares photographs and writing in reflection:
October 1
Last rehearsal in Tkaranto with rehearsal director Bonnie Kim. Nova is already in St. John’s leading Body-Choir workshops in preparation for our arrival. Excitement arises and the group consensus is this must be fun!*
2 important updates from Nova on a post-rehearsal pass by greeting zoom call. These include:
● 2 scouted thrift shops within 10-minute walk: for extra costume layers in case it gets too cold. No other reasons.
● The large bathroom with ceramic flooring beside our green room. Rare accommodation for an outdoor presentation. Svāhā! On the Land, is ready to depart. Neighbourhood Dance Works (NDW), here we come!
October 4
7:30am (EST) - Dancers gather at YYZ, Toronto Pearson, with matching luggage tags. Travel days and tech days are often smushed into one. Sometimes performance as well. For this tour, we are gifted a full day for travelling and settling.
2:15pm (NST) - Julia Carr, festival director, Robert Avezdo, NDW Board’s Secretary, greet us with welcome bags at YYT, St. John’s International Airport! The shining sun and blue skies as the backdrop whilst Julia tells us about the festival’s choice to fly everyone a day out early. Coastal weather mean storms often delay travel. Mother Earth , her winds, and her rains are revered, respected, and accounted for. Nova Dance mirrors the care with the choice to travel with an understudy/swing. My role this tour: hybrid writer and understudy/swing. Hat switching, senses awakening, adding to the dance’s documentation in my body.
October 5
A day outdoors journeying with the sun.
6:30am: departure from Alt Hotel. Not a minute later. Destination is Signal Hill for sunrise. Nova leads with a rejuvenated pace. 3 ahead and 4 behind, the light doesn’t wait. It simply rises when it’s time.
Nova and Rajvi in profile on Signal Hill
Nova and Rajvi in silhouette: watching sunrise on Signal Hill, standing on 500 million year old rock!
We break for breakfast and shake the legs to go uphill again.
Arrival: The Colonial Building for our first rehearsal.
Pat sets up our sound and we begin:
● Circular check-in, youngest to oldest.
● A playlist for warm up
● Audio listen through. Anisa Tejpar, rehearsal director, counts our 7's in the video recording from another Svāhā! showing
● Spacing on the stairs
● An easeful walk through. This must be－ This is fun
whole cast - reach
Nyda, Rachana
Swadhi
Neena, Mel, Rajvi
Swadhi, Nyda, Rachana, Rajvi, Nidhi, Mel
Nidhi and Mother Earth
Lunch (another pitstop at a vintage shop). Return.
Hello Body-Choir!
● Another check-in, standing in a circle
● clockwise: your roots
● counter clockwise: your dance upbringing
Our playlist again, this time with our new members. The familiarity of repetition holds structure for noticing in this ritual of gathering . What’s changed, what’s different, what’s new, what’s the same? Where are we in this moment and what’s needed to arrive where we’d like to?
“we’d like to go to the ocean.”
When desires and ideas are shared, this group says “ok, action.” A final run through with adaptations and back to the hotel for ocean preparations. 7 in a taxi navigating with oral instructions: “to the unmarked pathway down to Beachy Cove please and thank you.” 25 minutes later, we are dropped off with no path in sight. An emerging stranger reveals the opening and confirms we are in the right location. Down the unpaved and feet-made road, giddiness grows the lower we go.
Nova at the shoreline
Arrival: Beachy cove.
It’s a place where the locals go.
the rocks and the waves
Climbing the rocks,
into the water...
we huddle around the local people’s fire.
Nyda, fist on rock
ocean on the left, ground and fire in the middle, freshwater pool on the right
A meeting place of saltwater waves and freshwater streams. The waters don’t roar quite like this in Tkaronto, “the place in the water where the trees are standing.”
In the company of others, rising and setting with the sun. A nod to the Atlantic and back up the path to meet our taxi again.
Evening comes quick along with dinner. Then to LSPU Hall for “Between Shoes (mixed bill).” From one coast to the other, we are gathered together as neighbours, at different scales.
October 6
It’s show day!
Pain and pleasure in equal measure. Extra warm up time and care; A tweaked ankle on a different set of stairs the night before. The option of an understudy and an earlier call time distribute the pressure. All is well, ankle is good with the original plan and one small shift. The speed of the day is quick, though, hurry and panic do not show up. Body-Choir joins and last costume pieces are fixed on. A crowd forms outside by 3pm. Thank you to our audience, the place continues to be transformed. Little pom poms of coloured offerings are scattered on the grey steps. Body-Choir and 4 company members open with a Namaskaram. Facing in all directions, followed by an exchange with the dancers, Svāhā! On The Land, commences.
Mother Nature graces us with an outdoor favour: the breeze sweeps the pom poms westward at the change of music. 2 birds fly overhead, southeast, as a duet commences. She knows her timing well in this change of season. Colour, spice and everything nice... Cue: Mel Hart, host for our block party. Nova Dance wraps the festival in St. John’s with a celebration!
Group photo taken by Pat!
Children leave their strollers and parade in line with middle-aged and the seniors. Corners of eyes and mouths are lifted across many generations and cultures. Those who’ve gathered weave in lines and return to circles , infusing breath and life into the concrete structures.
Our stories shared with the locals, our ears that tune to their sounds, our hands that meet our hearts , our palms that join the heartbeat of the grounds, our recitations, “a way of activating and amplifying the voices of the land , the voices of the people, the voices of women, then and now!” (Mushtari, Nova Dance’s Public Space Research Intern).
We pass by this plaque each day with every crossing from the courtyard to the greenroom. In these early days of October 2024, we do a scan of time’s past. Just shy of 100 years ago, April 1925: Women in St. John’s, Newfoundland win the right to vote and run for public office. October 2024: Nova Dance, a dance company comprised of women of colour, all first or second generation immigrants, led by Nova Bhattacharya, a woman of colour and daughter of immigrants, show up to St. John’s to have conversations.
This is a layered process . One layer, a subversion of colonial structures and histories. Another layer, a scarf, maybe a sweater. Taken off once the dancing begins and temperature warms. The flesh, the layered body , holds complexity and simplicity. Alive and breathing, carrying the heartbeat.
With our voices, our bodies, our physical existences, we will remember this . Svāhā! On the Land, on the grounds of the Colonial building, “a gathering place for people to explore, contemplate, challenge, commemorate, and debate our story of governance¹.”
a still from a timelapse of our final evening
A gathering in the hotel lobby for a final group hug in the evening. Nyda shares a poem by poet Bisharo Farah, “Love is a Revolution.”
Nova, whole cast on stairs, Pat on sound
St. John’s, NL from the airplane window
Three head back on a morning flight to Tkaranto, five to Cornerbrook for a presentation of Decoded Dances, and one stays in St. John’s to spend more time with the water and the land .
Svāhā, is a Sanskrit word². It’s used in many languages and contexts. One of its meanings is, an offering to the heavens, and a surrender to higher powers. Thank you to our neighbours , before and now, close and afar. This offering has now met Pacific and Atlantic shores.
**text in pink are words and phrases from Nova Dance’s cloud of repetitions.
— ¹quoted from Newfoundland and Labrador’s website: Colonial Building
— ²From: “Svaha, Svāhā, Svāha: 27 definitions”