Simplicity (sketch 4)

Simplicity (sketch 4) is in dialogue with a canon of contemporary dance that emerges from Chennai (India) in the late twentieth century. This lineage has been shaped by radical dance artist Chandralekha and is currently evolved and forwarded by choreographer Padmini Chettur.

The core material of this piece is dance itself. The body is the primary architecture to examine how one disrupts or makes space visible. It is rooted in site; both of the body and of the stage. It takes neither for granted.

Marking the intersecting cardinal and ordinal directions, the dancers negotiate a single diagonal line in space. A shared, progressive gestural phrase, taking the arms from low to high, is continuously remixed. This occurs in different time signatures with an accelerating tempo. The dancers hold multiple expressions of time simultaneously; in the upper and lower body as well as on the left and right sides.

A multitude of gestures, appearing whole yet unfinished, maps out ways in which we are precisely in and out of sync with each other. This collective process of aligning and misaligning examines the tender space of departure before completion as we attempt to catch up with each Other.

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