Miss-Delectable
New Member
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2004
- Messages
- 17,160
- Reaction score
- 7
Making faces for a living-Review-Sunday Specials-Opinion-The Times of India
A few years ago, the villagers of Champaner saw a vision. Their village goddess was standing atop a 40-foot high wall, twirling in a trance. When one of the villagers screamed ‘devi’ in awe, the man wearing the goddess’ mask smiled.
It was one of the best reactions that the contemporary dancer Astad Deboo had ever received on his shows. After the performance, some villagers came up to him and said, “We did not understand anything, but your body moves like poetry”.
As he recalls this “honest compliment”, sitting in the calm of the Max Mueller Bhavan, where he conducts most of his rehearsals, Deboo’s eyes soften. He knows people do not always understand his style, they call it contemporary or experimental. But he likes to describe it as “a process of discovering my body.”
The process started with training in Kathak and Kathakali as a kid and then finding them too restrictive. Kathakali made him stand on the edge of his feet throughout and “in classical, you can’t do this,” he says, twisting his right arm backwards.
So he went on to collaborate with other forms from countries like Indonesia and Japan. Now he has reached a stage where every Deboo show promises an innovation. In his upcoming show in Mumbai, for instance, the 61-year-old is going to make the Pung Cholom drummers of Manipur dance without their drums.
The prospect of taking away the dancers’ “security blanket” of drums, and making them lie down on the floor in a foetus-like position, brings him almost sadistic pleasure. To add to this, he has even inserted a jugalbandi segment, where two groups of Manipuri dancers challenge each other through song and dance.
Often during rehearsals, he is used to catching dancers looking shiftily at each other from the corner of their eyes. But Deboo, who is contemplating a show where he stands on his head throughout while only the legs move, warns them, “If it doesn’t kill you, then it’s no good.”
What does kill him though is the attitude of his own hometown, Mumbai. His name doesn’t assure him shows in the city. Next week, he will be performing here after a gap of almost four years because a cultural foundation agreed to fund him. Usually, when he approaches corporates for funds, they praise him verbally and later dismiss him saying they are not sure what their “balance sheet would look like.”
Even when he wanted to put up a dance show, along with his troupe of deaf dancers, exclusively for the hearing impaired in the city, no one was willing to sponsor it. When he performed with those very kids in the Rashtrapati Bhavan last year, the former president APJ Abdul Kalam was moved to tears and offered to serve the deaf performers dinner himself.
Deboo, who has been working with the deaf for the past 19 years, has a unique training method. He teaches them on a wooden floor. The vibrations of his steps then guide the disciples. He is often asked why he shouts at his deaf students when they, obviously, can’t hear him. But Deboo knows they can gauge his moods from his gifted face.
When they want feedback, they run to his assistant Laxmi. “Even if I like it, I do not comment,” he says. A few years ago, when he had gone to Japan, Deboo met a similar character. He had demonstrated his work for three continuous days, but the theatre director Satoshi Miyagi had made no comment. Then, someone reassured Deboo saying, “If he does not say anything, it means you are on the right track.”
In the past, the veteran dancer has performed on the Great Wall of China and collaborated impromptu with rock band Pink Floyd to raise funds for lepers. But his most long-standing collaborative effort is the one with the martial artists of Manipur.
He has performed and travelled with them on many shows abroad but their martial arts background does not always assure safety. Once in 2003 in Sao Paulo, Deboo and his six-foot-tall light designer were waiting in the lobby of a four-star hotel for their bus to arrive.
The security guard was missing and two burly men armed with guns used the opportunity to mug them. As one held Deboo face down on the floor and started frisking him, two of his dancers came down the stairs. When Deboo immediately asked them to go back one of the dancers thought Deboo was getting an early morning massage. The muggers even took his music show disc but, “thankfully, I had a backup,” he says.
The 61-year-old treasures a prestigious telegram that came home last year. It told him he had won a Padmashri. When it arrived Deboo was in Spain, waiting for a call from his technician regarding the lights. He got a call from his diplomat friend instead. “Do you want some good news?” the friend asked. That was when he realised he had been awarded the honour.
The man who has choreographed songs in Meenaxi and Omkara , calls the film industry’s ways, “magical”. His film dances, however, don’t start in Mumbai and end on a New Zealand hilltop. He finds Bollywood’s dances generally monotonous. Watching six-year-olds dance to film songs on reality shows too annoys him. Deboo continues to get film offers but he politely declines for the lack of dates. Deboo is now booked till 2011. That’s how early his tours are planned abroad. It’s only in India that “people ask me if I can perform one week before the show.”
Soon, he would be heading to Norway for a show but before that, he is busy asking people for ghost stories. It is his homework for the Hong Kong Arts Festival of 2009. Each performer has been asked to come up with three ghost storylines, preferably based on personal experience. But sadly, unlike the villagers of Champaner, Deboo has not seen any vision yet.
A few years ago, the villagers of Champaner saw a vision. Their village goddess was standing atop a 40-foot high wall, twirling in a trance. When one of the villagers screamed ‘devi’ in awe, the man wearing the goddess’ mask smiled.
It was one of the best reactions that the contemporary dancer Astad Deboo had ever received on his shows. After the performance, some villagers came up to him and said, “We did not understand anything, but your body moves like poetry”.
As he recalls this “honest compliment”, sitting in the calm of the Max Mueller Bhavan, where he conducts most of his rehearsals, Deboo’s eyes soften. He knows people do not always understand his style, they call it contemporary or experimental. But he likes to describe it as “a process of discovering my body.”
The process started with training in Kathak and Kathakali as a kid and then finding them too restrictive. Kathakali made him stand on the edge of his feet throughout and “in classical, you can’t do this,” he says, twisting his right arm backwards.
So he went on to collaborate with other forms from countries like Indonesia and Japan. Now he has reached a stage where every Deboo show promises an innovation. In his upcoming show in Mumbai, for instance, the 61-year-old is going to make the Pung Cholom drummers of Manipur dance without their drums.
The prospect of taking away the dancers’ “security blanket” of drums, and making them lie down on the floor in a foetus-like position, brings him almost sadistic pleasure. To add to this, he has even inserted a jugalbandi segment, where two groups of Manipuri dancers challenge each other through song and dance.
Often during rehearsals, he is used to catching dancers looking shiftily at each other from the corner of their eyes. But Deboo, who is contemplating a show where he stands on his head throughout while only the legs move, warns them, “If it doesn’t kill you, then it’s no good.”
What does kill him though is the attitude of his own hometown, Mumbai. His name doesn’t assure him shows in the city. Next week, he will be performing here after a gap of almost four years because a cultural foundation agreed to fund him. Usually, when he approaches corporates for funds, they praise him verbally and later dismiss him saying they are not sure what their “balance sheet would look like.”
Even when he wanted to put up a dance show, along with his troupe of deaf dancers, exclusively for the hearing impaired in the city, no one was willing to sponsor it. When he performed with those very kids in the Rashtrapati Bhavan last year, the former president APJ Abdul Kalam was moved to tears and offered to serve the deaf performers dinner himself.
Deboo, who has been working with the deaf for the past 19 years, has a unique training method. He teaches them on a wooden floor. The vibrations of his steps then guide the disciples. He is often asked why he shouts at his deaf students when they, obviously, can’t hear him. But Deboo knows they can gauge his moods from his gifted face.
When they want feedback, they run to his assistant Laxmi. “Even if I like it, I do not comment,” he says. A few years ago, when he had gone to Japan, Deboo met a similar character. He had demonstrated his work for three continuous days, but the theatre director Satoshi Miyagi had made no comment. Then, someone reassured Deboo saying, “If he does not say anything, it means you are on the right track.”
In the past, the veteran dancer has performed on the Great Wall of China and collaborated impromptu with rock band Pink Floyd to raise funds for lepers. But his most long-standing collaborative effort is the one with the martial artists of Manipur.
He has performed and travelled with them on many shows abroad but their martial arts background does not always assure safety. Once in 2003 in Sao Paulo, Deboo and his six-foot-tall light designer were waiting in the lobby of a four-star hotel for their bus to arrive.
The security guard was missing and two burly men armed with guns used the opportunity to mug them. As one held Deboo face down on the floor and started frisking him, two of his dancers came down the stairs. When Deboo immediately asked them to go back one of the dancers thought Deboo was getting an early morning massage. The muggers even took his music show disc but, “thankfully, I had a backup,” he says.
The 61-year-old treasures a prestigious telegram that came home last year. It told him he had won a Padmashri. When it arrived Deboo was in Spain, waiting for a call from his technician regarding the lights. He got a call from his diplomat friend instead. “Do you want some good news?” the friend asked. That was when he realised he had been awarded the honour.
The man who has choreographed songs in Meenaxi and Omkara , calls the film industry’s ways, “magical”. His film dances, however, don’t start in Mumbai and end on a New Zealand hilltop. He finds Bollywood’s dances generally monotonous. Watching six-year-olds dance to film songs on reality shows too annoys him. Deboo continues to get film offers but he politely declines for the lack of dates. Deboo is now booked till 2011. That’s how early his tours are planned abroad. It’s only in India that “people ask me if I can perform one week before the show.”
Soon, he would be heading to Norway for a show but before that, he is busy asking people for ghost stories. It is his homework for the Hong Kong Arts Festival of 2009. Each performer has been asked to come up with three ghost storylines, preferably based on personal experience. But sadly, unlike the villagers of Champaner, Deboo has not seen any vision yet.