ABSTRACTION OF BALLET CHARACTERS
Being predominantly trained in Bharathanatyam, I am very accustomed to using gestures and narratives, making every single nuance of every word of the poem or story absolutely clear and all chalked out. I am very accustomed to every expression 'told through the face and eyes.
After beginning training in Ballet 4 years back, I slowly began to gain ground on using the whole body to express a certain thing. How the happiness is burst forth in glorious arabesques and how a pain is mirrored through curved backs and the tip of the head touching the tip of the toe as the ballerina resigns to her fate.
Here the whole body becomes the gesture, the whole body becomes the expression, the 'word'.
Fascinated, and in an attempt to try to assimilate this feel in a more exaggerated manner in my Bharathanatyam performances, I began studying various characters of various ballets, their moods, emotions, and how they are transferred through the aid of music.
Through the years, of course I have grown fond of a particular few ( The characters and the dancers who depict them :) )
Throughout this process where reduction and expansion strangely seemed to be working together, ( I was reducing hand gestures but was expanding the whole body as a gesture. I was reducing the word to word recounting of narratives, but at the same time was expanding the whole horizon of story telling just with music moods); I began wondering what would happen if the body also dissolved.
If the body also was reduced to something else.
It could not just 'reduce', there had to be 'something else', some other foothold of expression.
For me, the obvious answer was color.
'Visual', but not body visual.
And so I've begun this series of abstraction of Ballet characters and my readings of them.
Beginning with three of my favourites -
Giselle ( Carla Fracci's interpretation is exquisite), Gamzatti of 'La Bayadere' ( Marianela Nunez was probably born for this ); and Sleeping Beauty ( Margot Fonteyn. She just has to smile to become the princess).
It is an ongoing series.
Here goes the first experimental few :
( Mixed Media - Charcoal, Inks, Watercolors, Dry Pastels)
After beginning training in Ballet 4 years back, I slowly began to gain ground on using the whole body to express a certain thing. How the happiness is burst forth in glorious arabesques and how a pain is mirrored through curved backs and the tip of the head touching the tip of the toe as the ballerina resigns to her fate.
Here the whole body becomes the gesture, the whole body becomes the expression, the 'word'.
Fascinated, and in an attempt to try to assimilate this feel in a more exaggerated manner in my Bharathanatyam performances, I began studying various characters of various ballets, their moods, emotions, and how they are transferred through the aid of music.
Through the years, of course I have grown fond of a particular few ( The characters and the dancers who depict them :) )
Throughout this process where reduction and expansion strangely seemed to be working together, ( I was reducing hand gestures but was expanding the whole body as a gesture. I was reducing the word to word recounting of narratives, but at the same time was expanding the whole horizon of story telling just with music moods); I began wondering what would happen if the body also dissolved.
If the body also was reduced to something else.
It could not just 'reduce', there had to be 'something else', some other foothold of expression.
For me, the obvious answer was color.
'Visual', but not body visual.
And so I've begun this series of abstraction of Ballet characters and my readings of them.
Beginning with three of my favourites -
Giselle ( Carla Fracci's interpretation is exquisite), Gamzatti of 'La Bayadere' ( Marianela Nunez was probably born for this ); and Sleeping Beauty ( Margot Fonteyn. She just has to smile to become the princess).
It is an ongoing series.
Here goes the first experimental few :
( Mixed Media - Charcoal, Inks, Watercolors, Dry Pastels)
GISELLE -
"At the end of tragedy, there is always an overwhelming tenderness"
GAMZATTI :
"Princess I am, yet I stand with a begging bowl at the door of love..."
SLEEPING BEAUTY :
"The almost eternal sleep"
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