Kannaadi: An Evening of Looking at Personal Stories, Law, Politics and Performance

Image courtesy of the artist

What is a ‘margam’, should we still follow it? Why and how do we dance in our own universe? Should we look around? What does it take to pause, to break? Why only Krishna? Who is ordinary and who is special? How are children coping with our binary world? Can women own their stories? Can we claim our space and resist the regime? Are we a Sita or a Surpanaka? How important is it to speak the history of the form we practise? Can we trace our own histories through it? How do we deal with the violence of the past? How do we cope with the present? How do we, now, create a future?

Priyanka Chandrashekar is a movement practitioner based in Bengaluru. She has also trained and worked as a lawyer and her performance is inspired by both these experiences. Her work investigates the relationship between what we perform in classical dance and what is happening around us, and she does so in an anthological mode. The choreography will explore texts and poetry popularly used in Indian classical dance and their relevance to the contemporary lives of the performer. Through these subversive works, Chandrashekar will attempt to question the practice and pedagogy of her form while situating her performance in the present political context and critically looking at her own lived experiences.

This performance has been curated as part of the programming around MAP’s inaugural exhibition VISIBLE/INVISIBLE.