December showcased the best of choreography when Sapphire Creations Dance Company & Sudarshan Chakravorty presented their SappTop Series, Session III, at TopCat CCU on Topsia Road, with their long-time associate and French choreographer Michel Casanovas, who held a seven-day residency as part of International Choreographers Residency of Sapphire or INCRES XV (International Choreographers Residency of Sapphire).
The dancers from Sapphire — Promita Karfa, Bijoy Sharma, Sylvester Mardi, Rathin Das, Sahini Chowdhury, Abrar Saqib, Raju Sarkar, Anurag Gupta, Pradeep Gupta, Kunal Bayan, Anushka Majumdar, Indrita Dey, Nitai Parui and Aheli Dey — exhibited their learnings from Michel’s workshop on freeing the body. It was out-of-the-box and broke barriers of aesthetics. We saw spontaneous flowing and ebbing movements, carried out by the talented dancers without inhibitions and it was almost as if gushing wind and flowing water had been unleashed on stage.
Watergames, Michel’s choreographic project, made its Calcutta debut at Session III of the SappTop Series. Performed by Dipna Daryanani, Kamakshi Saxena, Maniny Chakrabarty and Bhavna Pani, who wore costumes designed by Marvin D’Souza, showcased an abstract composition. Playing with different rhythms and movements, the dancers presented different properties, facets and sensations of water, which is, at times, still and stagnant, turbulent or gently ebbing and flowing.
The sound design, composition and live music by Abhinav Saxena, with the interplay of lights and a set that seemed like what held the bodies in place, added a charm of its own to Watergames. The movements associated the movement of the body to the fluidity of water: Our body can be calm, sometimes playful like ripples, or could be agitated like tumultuous tides. The dance began with a journey towards the ocean, from the glistening edge to exploring the dark depths of the sea.