{"id":45617,"date":"2019-06-05T06:00:28","date_gmt":"2019-06-05T12:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=45617"},"modified":"2019-06-30T06:06:37","modified_gmt":"2019-06-30T12:06:37","slug":"chitrakaavya-dance-manubhuti-being-human","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/chitrakaavya-dance-manubhuti-being-human\/","title":{"rendered":"Chitrakaavya Dance: Manubhuti \u2014 Being Human"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Press image for Manubhuti \u2014 Being Human, presented by ChitraKaavya Dance<\/p><\/div>\n

On Sunday June 2, ChitraKaavya Dance presented Manubhuti \u2013 Being Human<\/em> at the Jeanne Wagner Theater. The program\u2019s five offerings brought together a multigenerational cast of performers steeped in classical Indian dance forms. It struck me how elucidating it can be to see young dancers and older dancers together on stage. Even if you\u2019re not deeply familiar with the traditions being presented \u2014 I know next to nothing about the history of Indian classical dance \u2014 you begin to see how dance traditions exist across the span of many interrelated, individual lives. The evening also featured contributions by modern dance artists Erica Womack and Katie Davis.<\/p>\n

Womack\u2019s \u201cAges\u201d and ChitraKaavya director Srilatha Singh\u2019s \u201cHyphen-ated\u201d exist as a part of a longer conversation between these two artists about how to collaborate across their distinct choreographic heritages. I spoke a little bit with Womack after the show and she shared stories about moments when Singh and her company members challenged her instincts, ultimately leading her to make a riskier choice. The highlight of \u201cAges\u201d was Srilatha Singh dancing in silks to Cesaria Evoria\u2019s famed rendition of \u201cBesame Mucho,\u201d as Womack held a large fan, dead-pan. I was reminded of Kazuo Ohno\u2019s Admiring La Argentina<\/em>, except it was a little more lighthearted and a little less self-serious.<\/p>\n

One of the most exciting elements of Sunday\u2019s performance was an excellent live band: Suchinth Murty singing, Tarun Gudipati on the tablas, Abhishek Mukherjee on sitar, Sriram Krishnamoorthy on violin, and Shreyas Hoskere on keyboards and flute. Their presence raised the bar, particularly in \u201cHyphen-ated,\u201d which began with an intense exercise in mirroring between Srilatha Singh and Malavika Singh, whose opening number at the top of the show was the evening\u2019s namesake. (I don\u2019t know if the two are related.) As they peered at each other through the empty wooden frame, I was drawn to their different strengths as performers. In Srilatha\u2019s dancing, I watch her hands, and how quickly she can shift my focus without my expecting it; in short, the mastery of someone who\u2019s been at it a while. In Malavika\u2019s dancing, it\u2019s her expansiveness, the ability to fill the empty stage, and her proclivity for off-balance rests and unexpected pauses \u2014 a hip tucked at an obscure angle, a lunge that seems too deep to sustain and then crumbles silently. I\u2019m eager to see more of these conversations in the future.<\/p>\n

This article is published in collaboration with loveDANCEmore.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Sunday June 2, ChitraKaavya Dance presented Manubhuti \u2013 Being Human at the Jeanne Wagner Theater. The program\u2019s five offerings brought together a multigenerational cast of performers steeped in classical Indian dance forms. It struck me how elucidating it can be to see young dancers and older dancers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1649,"featured_media":45618,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dance"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/image-asset.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-06 07:51:26","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1649"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45617"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45621,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45617\/revisions\/45621"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}