Portraying emotions through contemporary dance

A unique dance form featuring themes like ‘Peek-A-Boo’, ‘I Just Missed You’ and ‘Alone’ was staged by contemporary artists Chandana Sarma and Durgakoteshwar Rao recently. The show was titled ‘Impressions’ and Chandana explains, “We our performing a contemporary dance on concepts which we have divided into three forms.

‘Peek-A-Boo’ is about the feel of innocent child who does not understand anything and has a lot of curiosity to know what is going on around him and ‘I Just Missed You’ is a dance which expresses the feel of missing someone close to you. ‘Alone’ is about expressing emotions through a body devoid of a face.”

Chandana is an independent performer who works as a choreographer in Bengaluru. She is trained in classical dance forms like Kathak, Bharatanatyam and western contemporary dance. She has been involved in working with managing, physical, visual and experimental theatre in India and Europe.

Dance has different forms depending on the culture and state, but contemporary is a free style art where a person expresses his feelings and emotions depending on the concept. The feelings are expressed with hands, eyes, body movements and sometimes using a mask on the face.

“My contemporary dance form ‘Alone’ does not mean always lonely or depressed, it could even mean that we as humans love to spend some time by ourselves, which makes us feel good and refreshed. Even martial arts follow this concept. Other than this I have given a number of shows and one of my concept is ‘Mad’ where I expressed the actions of an insane person and how they have more energy than an ordinary person.” says Durgakoteshwar who hails from school of Attakalari in Bengaluru.

Contemporary dance is one of a famous dance performed by many dancers these days as it’s the best way to express sentiments, moods, and reactions in a dance form. People watching the performance easily interact with the form as their can imagine themselves depending on the concept.

By:Chitra Saikumar