Breaking Boundaries I Astad Deboo I Sunil Shanbag I 2011

Описание: Remembering Astad🌸
Film #1 - Breaking Boundaries

I saw Astad dance for the first time in the mid-eighties at the Prithvi Theatre. His physicality and his music both seemed to come from another world to someone like me who had no exposure to what was then known as “modern” dance. But there was immense theatricality in his work, a challenging of boundaries, of time and space, and I held on to that for dear life. That night, walking home, I felt a deep sense of liberation. Good contemporary dance has that effect on you.

We became colleagues and close friends. We brainstormed new ideas, I designed lights for him, travelled on tours, and eventually began documenting his work whenever we had the resources.

Those early years were when he struggled to find his “voice” as a dancer. His years of travelling and learning from different cultures and styles had given him rich resources, but it was training in Kathakali that gave him a unique, and complete, vocabulary. The theatricality now was deliberate and measured. He could weave magic on stage, and slow time down at will.

Astad never had students in the traditional sense, and yet there are hundreds of people who have learnt from him. He felt most deeply about his deaf and hard- of-hearing students from different institutions, and the young dancers from the Salaam Baalak Trust. He was a tough teacher, pushing the dancers to go beyond any physical, or psychological limitation they may have. He enjoyed collaborations and has created several impressive works with puppeteers, musicians, and his Manipuri Thang Ta fighters, and the Puncholum drummers.

The two films we are sharing are the outcomes of our documentation project as we tried to capture Astad’s process and his way of working. His work has been filmed with amazing sensitivity and skill by some of our most wonderful documentary film people. Astad was always grateful for this. This sharing is to celebrate Astad’s work, and the wonderful spirit of camaraderie and support shared by artists.

Sunil Shanbag
December 2020

Breaking Boundaries
This film follows the rehearsal process of the work Breaking Boundaries which the
Late. Astad Deboo developed with the young dancers of the salaam baalak trust, New Delhi.

The Dancers:
Anil Kumar
Avinash Kumar
Feroz
Gagan Singh
Manju Kumar
Mohammed Shamsul
Neetu Kumar
Priya
Pankaj Kumar
Raju kumar
Raju Thappa
Rekha
Rohit Kumar
Viraj

Choreography : Astad Deboo
Assistants : Avinash Kumar, Mohammed Shamsul
Design : Eureka Moment Design Company
Music : Philip Tan, Rakesh Chaurasia, KODO Drummers, U. Srinivas
Lighting : Milind Srivastava

Director - Sunil Shanbag
Produced by Chrysalis Films
Cinematography - Sudheer Palsane
Editing - Sruti Visweswaran
Sound - V P Mohandas
Production Support - Ganesh Sonavane

Runtime : 30 Minutes
The Astad Deboo Foundation, 2011.

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