The mysticism of the Neelakurinji flower that blooms once every 12 years in the hills of Kerala makes it the core of many myths and legends. For the Mumbai-based Metamorphosis Theatre and Films’s production, The Blue Flower (picture, top), it becomes a metaphor for lovely things that are long gone — lost love, vanished ideals and homelands abandoned or taken away. Video art, dance and multiple movement practices came together in the work of the playwright and director, Omkar Bhatkar, which recently premiered at the Manifest Dance-Film festival organised by AuroApaar and Alliance Française in Pondicherry. The piece attempted to tell an aching story about the universal yearning for the unattainable. Despite a great theme, Metamorphosis’s effort was staid and its structure basic. Although there was some visual drama with live movement patterns that were in dialogue with the ones in the film, the choreography was tepid.

Metamorphosis (picture, bottom), a performance by Papia Chakraborty and Surendra Tekale, was a compelling duet that interrogated the transformation of individuals with time. The duo danced in a space marked with white tape on the floor, only to rip off parts of the tape and stick it back in re-calibrated patterns at the end. They inhabited the space with suppleness, their movements meshing effortlessly. The intensity and the lyricism of the duet as the two skilled dancers curled, lifted, jumped, turned, stretched and rolled on the floor intuitively around each other were indeed gripping.

Grace Gitadella’s Her Waters Broke, an exploration of the choreographer’s relationship with water executed through dance, words, songs, poetry, chanting of mantras and painting of kolam, related childbirth to water. The work was utterly amateurish. Pooja Radhakrishnan’s Displaced — a take on the fear of the unfamiliar and loss of the familiar — attempted to venture into unknown spaces. The young dancer handled an important theme with a light touch. Her work was clever and eminently watchable.

These live performances were part of a festival that was focussed on dance films. A bunch of brilliant entries from across the globe made the programme a truly fulfilling one.