Chalking
Chalking is a commissioned work for five ĀNANDAM dance artists from diverse backgrounds. Created by renowned choreographer Padmini Chettur (IN) with composition by Maarten Visser. Chalking began development in 2019, between Canada and India, and premiered in 2022.
“What does it mean to align oneself in space and time? Five performers build and unbuild an idea of circularity. A specific language that is at once unfamiliar, yet somehow inclusive of the multiple aesthetics that the dancers represent is articulated. A language that in one way has the precision of an ancient form but one that is rooted in functionality rather than the decorative / narrative.
Chalking deconstructs a body’s rotational possibilities—turning, spinning—into a vocabulary of tension and resistance, inscribing absence at the very heart of the body’s presence with others. The performance segments and arcs movement— drawing, erasing, and recharting encounters. The compositional structure is non-narrative, a material grid that stages the politics of dance, of what it means to align oneself in absence, in the presence of others.”
— Padmini Chettur, choreographer
“It has to be seen as a work that will give an audience a new set of references rather than drawing upon existing clichés. The divisions of bodies in the most obvious racial, nationalist ways must give way for a more nuanced thinking that is rooted in humanity. That is its radicality. The work will neither entertain, nor narrate. It is a response from an India that is sophisticated and complex, not the India of nostalgia and romance.”
Year: 2022
Venue: Nathan Phillips Square, Toronto, Albert Campbell Square, Scarborough
Choreography: Padmini Chettur
Composition by: Maarten Visser
Rehearsal Direction: Harikishan S Nair
Dance Artists: Tanveer Alam, Nithya Garg, Robert Kingsbury, Brandy Leary, Atri Nundy
Presenter: ArtWorxTO for the Year of Public Art
Photos: Naveen Yohannan, Fran Chudnoff