Paromita Kar - Creative Process Blog
Paromita Kar- Process Blog
My piece for exploration and presentation at PROSPECTS is titled Ret/Chakri (Sand/Spiral). The ideas for Ret/Chakri (Sand/Spiral) have been incubating for the past two years, and PROSPECTS on Feb 23, 2023 will be the first iteration of this piece.
Roots of Ret/Chakri
I am a dancer of South Asian and Central Asian dance forms, having grown up in India and the United States, and currently based in Canada. My movement background comes from classical Indian Odissi dance, which is one of the 8 different classical Indian dance forms, which were all historically rooted in different regions of India. This piece draws upon a movement tradition which came into my life as a learned movement practice as an adult- from a set of Indian folk dances from the state of Rajasthan, a state geographically adjacent to my hometown of Delhi, India. A large part of Rajasthan state is situated in the Thar Desert, which straddles northwest India and Pakistan. I have been dancing and training intensively in dances of the Thar Desert for over a decade.
The name of my piece is Ret/Chakri. Ret refers to sand in Hindi language, which is central both as a natural element in the Thar desert of Rajasthan and also in much its culture, music, dance and traditions and Chakri refers to the wheel, or a spiral, or in the context of dance, a turn/spin.
The root of this dance/movement project was based in two dance experiences – one as a practitioner/performer, and one as a spectator for the work of another choreographer. In 2014, I had the opportunity to watch an early iteration of Brandy Leary’s piece Ablation in Toronto, featuring dancer Marie-France Forcier dancing barefoot on top of a block of ice held together with nails.
An experience while dance training in a Rajasthani folk dance form in 2019/2020 reminded me of the above piece. I was studying a dance form known as Bhavai, under my teacher Durga Devi Kalbeliya from the kalbeliya tribe and community of professional performers in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan. The bhavai dance form involves dancing with multiple water pots balanced on the head, both by themselves and then balancing them while the dancer balances on different objects, such as the edge of a brass plate, or metal water tumblers.
Image (Right): Paromita Training in Bhavai dance form at Desert Cultural Centre, Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, January 2020.
Image Description: A dancer, wearing a pink skirt and dance training outfit, standing balanced barefoot on top of two metal tumblers while balancing four pots on the head.
While training intensively in this dance form in 2019/2020 in Rajasthan, the experience of stepping on the metal tumblers, as part of the dance, and the subsequent discomfort reminded me of Brandy Leary’s piece Ablation, created on the block of ice. This visceral affect-memory was reawakened at that moment, and the seeds of Ret/Chakri were planted.
In its original conception, this work was designed to “create” a deliniation/definition of space with a large concentric spiral of sand being within the choreography, its theme evoking of ret chakri- sand spiral.
The presentation as a work-in-progress at PROSPECTS Feb 2023, produced by Aeris Korper will be its first iteration in a tangible physical form.
Choreographic Development
As I mentioned earlier, the ideas for Ret/Chakri have been incubating for two years. I returned to Canada in late January 2020, with the Bhavai dance as a new addition to my repertoire. I soon encountered multiple challenges in adapting this dance form to Canadian realities. For instance, dough and sand are used amply and significantly in Bhavai dance. However, while dough in the Thar desert in northwestern India remains dry and can be reused, in Canada, due to higher humidity/moisture than in a desert environment, dough does not harden in the same way, or gathers mold. The pandemic began soon after I returned to Canada, and entailed working from/performing/dancing from home, which, for me was a basement apartment, and bhavai dance form, due to the carriage of pots on the head, requires a higher ceiling, and is traditionally performed outdoors. These lessons became part of the process of adapting the Bhavai dance form to Canadian realities. I performed Bhavai dance form twice during the pandemic, both filmed indoors, and as I performed it, the curiosities and memories of Brandy Leary’s Ablation came to my mind each time.
I began the brainstorming of the piece as a series of sketches in 2022. I was thrilled to hear of the acceptance at PROSPECTS and this would give it the perfect opportunity as well as a tangible “deadline” to develop a first iteration of the piece. I had a few movement sketches and ideas in place, but no larger plot for a floor pattern.
Artistic inspiration often comes without warning, and a moment of inspiration in the staging/spatial floor pathways of this piece came to me while on a road trip through eastern United States, while passing through the Maryland/Pennsylvania border in early January 2023. I was in the passenger seat, and I quickly took out my notebook and sketched out and wrote brief notes about these patterns/pathways. I share this sketch below.
Image Description: A section of a sketch from a choreographic notebook, dated “January 10, 2023”. The sketch shows seven concentric circles, with small pots drawn in to designate the positioning of pots.
I’ve used this sketch as a “geographic roadmap” for my piece in its development thus far, and have worked on it subsequently to develop movement phrasings and a roadmap structure for movement structuring. I currently have an initial skeletal outline of the piece for its structuring. As I work on this piece, a new theme emerging organically is multiplicity. Multiplicity of meaning, of identities, and of contexts; complexities. I am artistically curious to see where this goes and how it manifests/developms within the piece.
Through Aeris Korper’s facilitation process, I have been deeply fortunate to have as my dramaturge/outside eye for this piece, Peter Chin. In the next weeks, I will be showing my piece to him, and have his insight, to feed into the growth and development of this piece, and eventually work this piece for its presentation at PROSPECTS showcase on February 23 at the Art Gallery of Hamilton.
PROSPECTS: an evening of dance and discussion presents
Ret/Chakri (Sand/Spiral)
Created by Paromita Kar
Thursday, February 23, 2023
7:30PM | Door at 7pm
Art Gallery of Hamilton
123 King St W, Hamilton
FREE!
RSVP HERE!