“Once, there was a woman who left everything behind to follow a call from the unknown. She left her home and her country and came to India, carrying with her only her unshakable faith,” says Odissi dancer Ileana Citaristi. She is referring to Mother Teresa on whom she has created a dance piece called Karuna.
It will be performed at the festival, Tribhanga, in Delhi to celebrate 20 years of the founding of Citaristi’s dance school, Art Vision. Citaristi, a former Italian hippie, who became a Padma Shri-winning Odissi dancer, could also be talking about herself.
The festival will unfold through four pieces, three of which showcase the trials and triumphs of an individual who has shaped spiritual thought across the world. Karuna, which opens the second day, focuses on Mother Teresa as a woman who left the safety of her convent to travel to a foreign land in pursuit of a sense of duty.
Every scene depicts a message about Mother Teresa through movements of dancers wearing costumes the color of soil. “I have used a lot of mats, because it is a symbol of the people who live on the streets of Kolkata and elsewhere. For them, mats are everything, their house, their bed, their clothing,” says Citaristi. This is in keeping with the power of symbolism that has always marked Citaristi’s choreography. The dance guru prefers suggestions to explanations, leaving the audience to fill the gaps with their own narratives.
Karuna is followed by Siddhartha, based on a work that had a tidal effect on Western philosophy. “Herman Hesse’s book was very, very important for us, the generation of the ’70s in the West. It inspired us to look within and search for a deeper meaning to life. It was the book that led us to the East,” says Citaristi, who arrived in India in 1979 and learnt Odissi from Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra. She lives in Bhubaneshwar.
The protagonist of Siddhartha begins his quest for self-realization by abandoning his home and giving up worldly temptations — but it doesn’t quench his thirst. “He opens himself to sensual experiences and gambling and money but he still cannot find the peace he seeks. Finally, on the verge of desperation, he meets an old boatman who teaches him the meaning of life by observing and listening to the river and understanding what it says,” says Citaristi.
It was challenging to translate a work of English-language prose into the poetic and musical idioms of classical dance, says Citaristi. The piece unfolds as solo and group segments, with the internal turmoil of Siddhartha depicted through the contortions on a pole by Malakamba artistes from Puri.
The festival begins with Saraha, a little-known tale about the founder of Tantric Buddhism. “Saraha is in search of a master, he symbolises a person who has lost touch with a natural part of himself,” says Citaristi, who plays the role of the low-caste woman in whom Saraha finally finds the right teacher.
“The woman is totally absorbed in sharpening an arrow. Then, when she is totally one with the arrow, she begins to aim it and Saraha notices that there is no target. The aiming itself is a target,” says Citaristi. One of the powerful sequences comes towards the end when the choreography explores contrasting geometrical shapes — Saraha lifts the woman in a vertical pose as a corpse lies horizontally near them in a cremation ground.
Several years ago, Citaristi had attended an exhibition of installation on the theme of time by Kapila Vatsyayan. “From that time, I have wanted to make a work on time,” she says. Kaala: Time Bound deconstructs the several dimensions of time through rhythmic and geometric formations by groups of dances.
The piece explores the latent nature of unmanifested time to the first vibration that created time to the linear journey of time through history to the sacred time which is a circle of creation and destruction. “Ultimately, there is the aspiration of man to reach a state of timelessness and live in the perennial moment,” she says.
The festival will be held at Kamani auditorium on July 13 and 14 at 7 pm. Entry is free
Source: The Indian Express