Qajaq Dancer

The Royal Opera House, Mumbai This week in particular, I have come to think of Art as giving humanity a perspective beyond the binary of the living and the dead in a way that does not demand blind faith. Philosophically, Homo Sapiens have struggled with the fact that we have developed language and reasoning beyond daily survival and the biological needs that we have classified as emotions. Seeing dance performed live by accomplished dancers in work by skilled choreographers can transcend the experience of witnessing a piece of theatre, and cannot be easily explained in words. For me, Art can transport me out of a physical reality of awareness of where I might be sitting or standing, but for this to happen, I have noticed that there are a confluence of externalities that contribute to such transcendence. The proscenium, the performers and two choreographers. In a unique Indo-Polish dance performance at the Royal Opera House in Mumbai, the Navdhara India Dance Theatre and Zawi...

Diwali is described online as a five day Hindu festival celebrating the spiritual “victory” of light over darkness… And as I suspected, my regularly scheduled classes were either suspended, or sparingly attended by students who did not take time off to travel home to spend the festival with family. As the foreigner, I was actually relieved to not be invited to familial events as the additional time I had to myself was very much needed for rest and preparation for the “community” workshops and a major presentation I had to conduct. Testing my audio-visual setup in the auditorium at Triveni Kala Sangam. Most of my friends in, and from, the USA were focused on the midterm elections. And this was my first experience voting with an absentee ballot as a US citizen living abroad. I posted a note on Facebook as I drove by the US Embassy in Delhi where I had performed with the Paul Taylor Dance Company in 1997, before I was a US citizen. There is something absurdly surreal about trying ...

This was a performance shot of me as "Baron Samedi" by fellow dancer Orion Duckstein, at Jacob's Pillow back in 2007. I'm not sure who the ghost in the background is. This week was Halloween in the USA and el Dia de los Muertos in Mexico, and Facebook posts were my only clue. The first was when the Taylor Company posted an old shot of me as “Baron Samedi” from the last two Taylor dances in which I originated a role. Fittingly, I will start this post with an anecdote about my mis-adventures in Delhi. I have mentioned that I am staying in a residential development in Gurgaon which is south of Delhi. Well I recently found out that the gates into the development are locked at midnight, and once I traverse the five minute walk along unpaved, unlit roads, I still have to call the building supervisor, Pradip, to be let in. Fortunately, he lives in the building, and seems reasonably good natured about dealing with my late arrivals. Last Saturday around 11:00pm, I used U...