Sunday Reads #8: Instinctive Movement
31 May 2020This week’s Sunday Read is inspired by the sunshine and our memory of touring Amaranthine to FITS festival in Romania last year.
The perfect weather combined with the amazing audience and the warm welcome, created a truly memorable experience from what is the world’s third largest theatre festival. (Watch a snippet of the performance further down the page).
The choreography, Amaranthine, is a co-creation by our Co-Artistic Director, Kevin and choreographer, Navala ‘Niku’ Chaudhari. Here we revisit a Q&A with Niku, which explores the making of the piece and the ideas behind it.
1) Niku, Amaranthine is a joint choreography between you and Kevin. How did the two of you meet and how did the choreography evolve?
Kevin and I were both studying in the same class at the NSCD. After graduating we pursued our thirst to dance in different dance companies across the globe. We met again in 2008 for the Place Prize competition. At the time I was co-director of Company Decalage and I invited Kevin to dance with us alongside Michael ‘Marso’ Riviere. We made Breaking Point together which reached the semi-finals. Under this direction we began to research the themes for Amaranthine.
2) What are challenges of co-creating and developing a choreography with another artist?
Amaranthine was a special collaboration as it was made on our own physical bodies. We were both working with other dance companies at the time and we would meet at the weekends to create and finish the piece. This was challenging on the body as we did not get much time to recuperate. The collaboration went smoothly as we both had a common artistic vision and a natural physical connection. Our desire was to create powerful interdisciplinary duet work together.
We met again after not seeing one another for five years and we created a whole new section to the existing repertory.
Here choreographing from the outside, it felt like we had seen each other only yesterday and that no time had passed. The challenge to create with another artist is that both your artistic voices are heard and envisioned. With Kevin it felt like we were on the same page and it was a pleasure to work with the Company Dancers, Juliana and Theo, that brought our vision to life.
3) What are the themes in the piece?
Amaranthine explores the timeless cycle of conflict and resolution between two people. The message that it expresses is that when all is said and done all we have are the people we cherish. An unspoken bond which cannot be broken.
4) Why is Amaranthine great to watch from an audience perspective?
It is a piece which a lot of people can relate to, as it looks closely at the male and female human relationships. The movement is also very powerful and risk taking.
5) Describe the movement style in the piece.
The style is an amalgamation of the techniques which Kevin and I both studied. The movement was very instinctive to how we wanted to express the story and was born out of the experiences we both had. In a broad sense the piece has a lot of influences from martial arts, capoeira/b-boying, contemporary dance and partner work.
You can watch Amaranthine on our YouTube channel as part of our Theatre Thursdays series, watch it here.
Amaranthine is choreographed and directed by Kevin Edward Turner and Navala ‘Niku’ Chaudhari. Performed by Theo Fapohunda and Juliana Javier. The seed of the idea grew out of the research made under the direction of Marso ‘Mickael’ Riviere.