The perception of dance theatre for the Pakistani audience is quite different from how the rest of the world regards it. In the past, we have seen continuous attempts at creating dance drama by troupes such as Tehrik-e-Niswan, but they all ended up being more of dance performances, hailing from ancient traditions like the Bharat Natyam. They have been repeating the same outlook on dance and have a consistent cult following amongst the older audience.
Dance theatre as a collaborative of dance and drama is largely an alien term for Pakistan. Its very recent introduction can be attributed to modern choreographers such as Joshinder Chaggar. She has time and again fused dance and other forms of movement with dialogue to initiate some sort of a conversation with the audience. Despite that, the audience has not learned to appreciate a performance like that as a whole — the claps and awes are always generated on a witty line or a challenging dance move. The wholesome experience has still not been perfected by the artistes or holistically experienced by the audience. Naivety prevails on the stage and beyond the fourth wall.
In all this disarray comes Eksod, a movement and dance piece by the German director Birdgel Joka. He not only succeeded in visually transforming the Napa stage into an asylum of his thoughts by using multiple projection techniques, but also left the audience with a feeling of distress despite the major language barrier. To put it more simply, this was the first time Karachi saw proper dance theatre, where movements had the ability to shift your responses and sensibilities, without saying a single word.
Though a few words were said in the beginning of the play, in Albanian, they didn’t take anything away from the disconcerting experience that Joka and his team generated with a dynamic, and more so multi-dimensional, use of the stage.
The performance was inspired from an Albanian movie Rethi I Kujteses that revolves around control in a totalitarian regime, and how the society responds to it. The performance seemed very introspective though, as it tried to portray different parts of a person’s memory by creating spaces divided by membranes on stage. The director didn’t consider it a self-portrait. For him, the rendition was more of a showcase of his self-exile and an escape from it.
The idea was aptly complimented by the video projections that were occasionally displayed on the membranes and the rest of the stage. Mattia Gandini (dancer) and Joka (lead dancer) start running away from their own projections that were cast on stage. This cohesion of dance, movement and technology was the real strength of their performance, and something that Pakistani artistes should look to for inspiration.
The highlight of the performance was the manner in which both Joka and Gandini synced their movements with the variations of audio levels, as they moved around an audio device placed on the stage. Their synchronisation was so spot-on that it seemed that the device was emitting sound in accordance with their movements. However, the director later clarified that it was all rehearsed to meet the variations of the score.
Joka was definitely the star of the night with his acrobatic and hip-hop inspired moves, while Gandini and the extras from Napa complimented him the best they could.
The audience’s reception was not very conclusive, as it all happened so quickly and so visually that they were out of their seats almost before easing into them.
Verdict: A performance like Eksod might have arrived a little too early for a rather naïve Pakistani theatre going audience, but it was much needed. It is the promising yet taxing projects like Eksod that inspire upcoming artistes to come out of their comfort zones and aim for something extraordinary.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 22nd, 2014.
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