I enjoyed the contemporary dance act The Black Album because many different things such as Hip-Hop, western classical music, ballet, narratives of struggle, endurance and achievement along with interesting use of music and lights on stage became a whole that was bigger than the sum of its parts. Something which Mandar sir spoke of during Gestalt Laws module.
While watching the dance performances, I began wondering when did something become contemporary? For I had always understood hip-hop as an expression belonging to the streets. As Andie's charachter in Step Up 2 pointed out
The Streets is about where you're from. It's not some school talent show. There's no spring floors. There's no spotlights. You use what you got and...
Does it still remain hip hop if it is performed on stage with lights, costumes etc? Does it now become high art? Does the label even matter? So how do the performers themselves about taking something that was to an extent considered deviant and playing at a posh venue like NCPA? Do they themselves or others from the larger Hip Hop community who continue to dance as street performers consider this form of hip hop a 'selling out' of sorts?
In my opinion, the dancers of yesterday's performance used hip hop to convey stories and feelings. And contrary to the hip hop as seen in the Step Up series, the hip hop in The Black Album was subtle, barely noticeable and what emerged in each of the three performances were stories. I interpreted them as stories of struggle, finding meaning, order and happiness in an increasingly chaotic world and uncertain times. Apart from hip hop devoid of usual Step Up kind of razzmatazz, the costumes too were mostly black and all very basic and minimal. (Reminds me of another art teacher who said minimum lines and maximum appeal, in context of illustration). Music and lights, as I mentioned earlier were used interestingly. Yesterday's performance was the first time I heard western classical music and it was exciting. What was more exciting however was how the dancers mapped their hip hop moves to apparently Beethoven and Tchaikovsky (the lady sitting next to me mentioned that is what the music was..I had no clue). The stage lights appeared to take on several roles themselves- sometime they were fire (my humble and perhaps totally uneducated interpretation) at other times, a single spotlight was the sun and on yet another occasion they a sense of hope, as if in the form of light at the end of the tunnel. If I remember correctly of the three acts in the entire performance- the first one had six dancers, the second one had three and the final one probably had nine. But somehow no one dancer stood out as visual order one by default throughout the performance (for details on visual order checkout Mandar sir's book at http://mrane.com/visualorder.php or the whole course at http://www.dsource.in/course/visualorder/index.html ). Every few minutes the focus of the act shifted from one dancer to the other and pretty much all the dancers' bodies and moves sort of blended in becoming a smooth flow of rich audio-visual narrative.
This contemporary performance reminded me of Chandralekha's deconstruction of Bharatnatyam, incorporating Yoga and Kalaripayattu into the choreography. It is interesting that something very very traditional to Indian culture (Bharatnatyam) and to western culture (ballet and western classical music) and something relatively new as hip hop, from different points in time on the continuum that is dance can come and meet at the point called 'contemporary'. This sort of takes me back to the question I had asked in the beginning- when does something become contemporary?
The back-story:The Black Album was sold out at the NCPA box office as well as online on Bookmyshow when I had checked earlier in the day. I decided to push my luck anyway and landed up at the venue and got what I was told was one of the last few remaining tickets. This also meant that I was sitting in the last row, very very far away from the stage inside NCPA's Tata Theatre. Luckily enough, earlier in the evening, I had picked up my spectacles. So in a friend's words I saw the show in 'HD'. Cheery on the cake: Walking back to Churchgate station around 9 pm-ish via Nariman Point promenade enjoying a cool windy evening. What a day!!
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