Bol-ywood

Having enjoyed myself at last year's Kalanidhi Indian Dance Festival, I decided to check out this year's edition on Saturday. This year's honoree is Kumudini Lakhia, so the show on Saturday was predominantly Kathak dancing. There were also 2 15-minute pieces from England-based Nina Rajarani Dance Creations highlighting Bharatanatyam dance.

This all-male dance troupe consisted of 4 dancers, a raga singer, a violinist, a flautist, and a percussionist. The dance style is fast and furious, comprising of a bended arms and legs. Entitled "Bend It...", the first piece's conceit is that the competitiveness and posturing of the dance is similar to a soccer game, so let's turn it into one. The instrumentalists became goal-keepers, while the percussionist and singer were the coaches. The dancers moved back and forth across the "pitch", showing off dance steps. Amusingly, when one side scores, they engaged in bhangra-style Bollywood celebrations. It was a funny and athletic piece. The second piece, "Quick!", envisioned the troupe as London businessmen going through their day, vying with each other from sun-up to sun-down. I felt that the dancing didn't work as well in this piece, but I thought that the call-and-response typical of Indian music, where a singer will sing a tala sequence which will be repeated by a musical instrument, being acted out as a tense business meeting was a nice metaphor.

The two book-ends performances of the night were a local and an Indian Kathak troupe. The main dance vocabulary of this dance style is a tapping out of tala sequences, often very fast, with bare feet. The dancer's shins are often wrapped with bells to amplify the sound.  It greatly resembles Flamenco dancing and in fact, the two dance styles are thought to be related.

The evening started off with 4 pieces by the Chhandam Dance Company supported by the Toronto Tabla Ensemble. The main choreographer of this company is Joanna de Souza. I have seen this performer and her support dancers before around town, for example at Kensington's Pedestrian Sunday. She is an excellent dancer, but I have always found something awkward about her style. While watching the other female dancer in her company, Kiran Phull, I realized that Joanna had stiffer arm movements. They were not as soft and "feminine" as Kiran and the female dancers from India. Since there are male Kathak dancers, I wonder if she should switch to a more masculine style, similar to the way Myriam Allard, a Flamenco dancer from Montreal, have both feminine and masculine styles.

The 4 pieces were average, with the modern touches not contributing much to the narrative. Alone, they would have been adequate. But tonight, they were completely eclipsed by Kadamb, Laikha's company from India.

This company was extraordinary. Comprising of 4 female dancers and a male dancer, their techniques were excellent: crisp percussive taps, interesting soft rings when dancing on the balls of their feet, fast spins, and evocative arm movements. During the last piece, Tarana, I was once again struck by how much Kathak resembles Flamenco as the women tapped out complex rhythms with their feet while swishing around their red flowing skirts. But it was the second piece Evam that most enchanted.

Conceived as a duet between female dancer Sanjukta Sinha and male dancer Akash Odedra, the dance started off slowly with both dancers in seated positions, moving through some almost yogic arm movements. Once they got onto their feet, their skills were quite apparent. In sync and moving together, they demonstrated how sensuous and flirty dancing can be, even when there is no touching between dancers. I had previously seen the standard Kathak spins, which is similar to a ballet dancer's, except done on the heels instead of the toes. I had never seen them done so fast and so numerous. I was also astonished that there were also whirling dervish style spins, where a dancer's head and arms move freely with the turns similar to a figure skater. These were my favourite because of their free range of motion. There were even spins on knees, like some Eastern European cossack. But it was the overall emotional content of the piece that made it stood out. I should also mentioned that all those feminine arm movements, coquettish head turns, and swaying hips kind of did a number on me.