Presenting non-Western dances to Western audiences can be a difficult business. If an artist adjusts too much, a deep tradition can flatten into pandering tourist fare. If an artist adjusts too little, fidelity can get in the way of communication; a living art form can come across as a relic.
Andrea Mohin/The New York Times
Bijayini Satpathy, left, and Pavithra Reddy of the Nrityagram Dance Ensemble in “Alap.”
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The Indian choreographer Surupa Sen negotiates the balance with grace. The sinuous, asymmetrical poses of her Odissi tradition, looking at once immovable and full of motion, disguise complex negotiations with gravity as mere embellishments of line. Similarly, Ms. Sen’s choreography elaborates on classical Odissi style while seeming merely to clarify it.
For 20 years Ms. Sen has worked closely with the dancer Bijayini Satpathy. For 20 years, in fact, the two women have lived in the same village in Southern India, Nrityagram, which is devoted to dance. The concert of duets and solos they’re bringing to the Skirball Center (April 6 to 7) is titled “Samyoga,” which in Sanskrit means “union” or “the conjunction of heavenly bodies.” That’s a fair description of Ms. Sen and Ms. Satpathy dancing together.
There’s a philosophical idea behind the work — the interaction between male and female principles in creation — but it can be appreciated on purely aesthetic and theatrical grounds. The women dance both male and female roles. Suggestions of demons and giant birds blend into abstract shapes, patterns and rhythms. A love spat between gods is presented as human comedy, in motion touched by the divine. And, as at all events presented by the World Music Institute, the live music should be at least as distinguished as the dancing.
Souleymane Badolo takes on the translation challenge from a different angle. Born in Burkina Faso, he started his dancing career there, in a traditional African troupe. Since 1993 he has been experimenting with Western contemporary dance, performing in Africa and Europe, but the first work he presented in New York, after he moved there in 2009, still looked pretty foreign. Telling his story in a mixture of French and his native language, Gurunsi, Mr. Badolo enacted a private ritual, slapping his flesh and clicking his tongue.
Since then it’s been fascinating to watch him adapt to his new home. Working with Reggie Wilson, a New York postmodern choreographer well versed in African dance, Mr. Badolo has become more postmodern and more New York. For his performances at New York Live Arts (April 25 to 27) he’s looking again at legacy, the line from his great-great-grandfather to his son. He’s also creating a piece based on a Gurunsi divination method involving the scattering of cowrie seeds.
Is that so different from Merce Cunningham’s chance practices? Is there such a great distance between Africa and downtown New York?
India Ink: Forces of Creation Moving in Unison
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India Ink: Forces of Creation Moving in Unison
