Padmini Chettur: Practice
Beginning February 14, 2022
As dancers we often learn through imitation. Our bodies learn one or multiple techniques that are taught to us through a set grammar, a series of steps/ phrases, unquestioned, unanalysed, often unsafe. Is this perhaps a mechanical, mechanising aproach? The intention of these modules developed after 3 decades of research, practice, choreography and teaching is to develop an acute bodily awareness and intelligence- physiological, sensorial and spatial. The methodology is helpful for any dancer hoping to develop a safer, critical, individualised practice. A sound foundational knowledge from which the navigation of forms and aesthetics gains clarity. It will lead us to thinking about dance and movement as a choice rather than something imposed on the body.
–Padmini Chettur
Modules
1. Spine; alignment, mobility, length, strength, stability, articulation
2. Grounding; weight transfer, using the feet, structure and musculature of legs, standing, walking
3. Centering; understanding centre, activating centre, connecting extremities, moving space,
revisiting spine and grounding through the centre, presence.
4. Practice/ Application; through learning and relearning a single phrase, participants will learn to
apply the knowledge of the previous 3 modules. When does dance begin?
After 10 years of training under Pandanallur Subbarraiyya Pillai, and another decade of dancing in the Chandralekha company, Padmini Chetter began her dance research by asking the question “how can one un-stylize the body”, and what then could a neutral body be? This led her to a period of unlearning, investigation into numerous somatic practices and years of very detailed, individual work on her own body as well as those of the dancers who worked with her. At the core of her thinking is the need to develop the body’s intelligence as well as analytical capacity. To shift dancers thinking away from dance, to the body itself.
