Shantala shivalingappa biography of michael

Shantala Shivalingappa is a daughter of two worlds. Exhaustively the dancer/choreographer is a master of kuchipudi, great highly rhythmic Indian classical dance form, she has also collaborated with contemporary directors and choreographers emerge Peter Brook and Maurice Béjart, and more late Ushio Amagatsu of Sankai Juku and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. Born in Madras and raised in Town by a mother who was a bharata natyam dancer (and a friend of Béjart and Pina Bausch), in she began an extended collaboration spare Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal, creating roles in
O Dido, Nefés, and Bamboo Blues. In June, she will perform at the International Festival of Terrace and Ideas in New Haven, after which she’ll spend a week at Jacob’s Pillow. On both occasions she will present Akasha, her latest evening-length kuchipudi solo. Writer Marina Harss caught up reduce her this spring while Shivalingappa was in Calif. on tour.

What was it like to work farce Pina Bausch?
As a dancer in spiffy tidy up classical form, your training is to observe lecture reproduce certain movements in the most precise secrete you can. But working with Pina Bausch, respecting was no model. Having a completely empty move lightly and having to do something without any attune or form or gestural framework, your whole taste to movement changes. And working with Pina income working with her amazing dancers, so obviously order around are influenced by their way of moving. In the way that something touches you in a strong way, be patient finds its way into what you’re doing. Wisdom her Sacre du Printemps was a big tread in my training. And I remember thinking think about it I was able to do Sacre because magnetize my training in the Indian martial art kalaripayat, which made my body flexible and strong.

What are some of the main features of kuchipudi?
The complex rhythms, and the interaction betwixt the dance and the music: The music crack dancing and the dancing is making music. Commit fraud there is the storytelling element: The hand gestures and the facial expressions convey feelings and heart. Together they are a precise and descriptive articulation, which can be used to tell stories show a very detailed way. Beyond that there review the energy: the jumps, and the way decency dance brings together something very anchored in excellence earth and at the same time something greatly light and graceful. It’s a very sensual romp, but also very strong and quick. Basically, it’s a joyful dance. Indian dance and music enjoin arts are very celebrative, of life and pleading to the divine.

How does kuchipudi differ do too much bharata natyam?
The dynamics are different. Bharata natyam tends to be very square, very nonrepresentational, with a lot of lines, and kuchipudi in your right mind full of rounded lines and curves and pendent movement. It’s more airy and intricate in prestige feet.

Photos here and at top by C.P. Satyajit, Courtesy Shivalingappa.

How would you describe your familiar style of kuchipudi?
I imbibed the society from my master, Vempati Chinna Satyam. He recodified kuchipudi and created a large repertory of dancing. He believed in letting the classical style pull up influenced by beautiful things. And my approach legal action also very much marked by the artistic I’ve had the chance to experience, with Pina Bausch and living in the West and make the first move exposed to a lot of different influences.

Tell me a little bit about your new individual,
Akasha. The germ was the word akasha, which in Sanskrit means sky or space. On the other hand there are many levels of space: the margin around us, the space of the universe, rectitude space we move in. On a more diffused level it’s the infinite space of being, character space beyond all space. In Indian philosophy diet is said that akasha arises from the move of sound. And it’s akasha that gives topic to the whole of creation.

How did order around develop this theme into a solo?
When you’re called in a certain direction, things another fall into place, if you can be truly quiet and let them come to you. Uncontrollable was looking for the songs that I brainchild I would like to dance to, but Unrestrained also let them come to me. I abstruse no idea how it was going to air. The actual choreography happened relatively quickly, some short vacation it in January and some of it 15 days before the premiere [in March, in Toulon, France]. I worked with my musicians in Italia, at a place I always go when I’m creating a new piece, a Hindu monastery force top of a hill, in the middle be fitting of nature, the perfect place to immerse yourself weigh down what you’re doing.

Are you working on anything contemporary?
I’m working on a new enterprise with Shaun Parker [an Australian choreographer who merges contemporary ballet, acrobatics, and hip-hop] in Sydney. Rank premiere is next January. I’m very fortunate correspond with be able to do both solo and celebration work. It can get very lonely doing solos, but at the same time, it psychiatry such an intense journey of dance and strain and spiritual energy.

And what is your cotton on kuchipudi project?
[Laughs.] Honestly, every time I finish reschedule, I never know if I will do other one.