When dance captures the stillness in movements

January Low presents ‘Pending’ at Medai in Bengaluru
| Photo Credit: Mithun Pai

January Low’s performance began in stillness. The absence of music was as striking as the lack of elaborate makeup or ornamentation. Movements being listed in the audio track were being matched with dance poses but the performance established from the beginning a view of the dancer’s practice room. The audience was invited to witness the dancer committing sequences to memory, listening to instructions, making notes and finding the dance within. 

One of two performances showcased in The Platform 2025 (presented by Alif Arts Consultancy at Medai, Bengaluru), January Low’s ‘Pending’ displayed the many little dances that make a dance. It opened repetitions, vulnerability and the search for perfection to the gaze of the audience, accustomed to guzzling the “end product” of demanding preparatory processes. In the final playing out of the dance, with music and other paraphernalia, the audience experienced both journey and destination in January’s performance.

Sooraj Subramaniam’s ‘Reflections of an Indian dancer,’ the other performance of The Platform 2025, was rooted in similar themes but used its own stylistic vocabulary to explore the interiority of a dancer’s relationship to three dance genres. The audience travelled with him as he located Bharatanatyam, Kathak and Odissi in their histories (without sidestepping complexities), on the Indian map and in the landscape of his body (as also his personal history). Unfolding against a sparklingly written and narrated prose-poem, Sooraj’s performance placed back-stories in the front. It reflected on loss; on being “messed with” when home became a distant, unknown entity. It described the “finding of a new locus” that his dance education and practice had enabled.

While an earlier version of January’s ‘Pending’ premiered in 2023 as ‘A Listening Body,’ Sooraj first performed ‘Reflections of an Indian Dancer’ in 2021, later touring the UK and Europe with it. ‘A Listening Body’ was a response to the changes in her “relationship with dance after the pandemic,” but ‘Pending’ offered “more nuanced content” because it was based on lessons distilled through the earlier work, January shares. Having been in search of “different entry points for the audience to encounter and experience Odissi,” January says, “my practice observes how Odissi continues to thrive in my South East Malaysian body as a mother to three children. My virtual mentorship with didi (Bijayini Satpathy) developed an agency in my body and practice that I have never experienced before. This inspired me to create this work.”

She was “curious to share the unseen labour (emotional and physical) that goes into practice, and the unwavering faith dancers carry with them when they show up, though performance opportunities are few and far between,” she adds. “The biggest challenge as a mother has been to remain consistent, to be kind to myself especially during the pauses (as a mother, there are many) and to stay present,” says January. Her focus, therefore, is on “the sacred stillness” that practice brings to her. 

‘Reflections of an Indian Dancer’, directed by Balbir Singh (of Balbir Singh Dance Company, UK) sought to “make Indian dance accessible without oversimplifying its complexity,” says Sooraj. “The main challenge was maintaining the tone and pace of the prose-poetry script while balancing the genealogies of the dance styles against an autobiographical backdrop.” He looks for “synergy rather than conflict between idioms,” he says, likening his immersive engagement with three forms to “being multilingual”. Lately, his practice has been centred on Odissi, “especially as I train with Bijayini Satpathy, and am relishing the fresh challenges and possibilities it offers,” he says.

Both ‘Pending’ and ‘Reflections of an Indian Dancer’ narrated dance stories in a carefully crafted inside out language. Mapping mind and body on stage, they felt inclusive of the audience in ways that conventional dance performances are often not. Effectively using pause and silence, they made thought visible, evocatively opening up subtext to audience experience.