Beth Wood chats with Ash Mukherjee, on his latest choreography for Akademi's dance production, Song of the City, which celebrates musician, poet and artist Rabindranath Tagores 150th anniversary.

                                                                                                                             © Pete Schiazza
Beth Wood:Song of the City was performed at the beginning of August at the Southwark Playhouse, inspired by Rabindranath Tagore, how did this opportunity come up?

Ash Mukherjee:2011 marks the 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore. Followers of his music and poetry the world over are celebrating this occasion in many ways. Mira Kaushik the director of Akademi wished to mark this occasion as well and asked me to create an experience for a London audience inspired by Tagore. We both wished to do this in an unconventional way and in an unconventional setting and above all in a way that may be relevant to 21st century western audiences, which is exactly what I strive to do with my own work in my company Ash Dance Theatre – Temple dance for the 21st Century.

BW:When were you first exposed to Tagore and what were your initial thoughts?

AM:An aunt wanted me to do a turn at a family gathering. But instead of the usual song and dance act she asked me to learn rather a long poem by Tagore. The poem was entitled Vir Purush (The Man of Valour) and was about how a young boy rode on horseback guarding his mother's palanquin from highwaymen. Written in the first person in concise and yet lyrical verses, you can imagine the effect this might have had on a rather precocious boy. It was an exciting but slightly daunting prospect to memorise it all and then recite it with conviction in front of our large and extended family and needless to say I was nervous and felt rather like the boy who stood on the burning deck. I did not have any expectations of Tagore or his work as I was a 6 year old. But I was hooked from the first line. It was so... romantic....and even now, I am a romantic dancer first and then a classical dancer. This poem made me feel brave and chivalrous. And above all it painted a very magical and vivid picture as the story unfolded. It was like being there. It made me want to give it a visual form by creating the ballet or the film version of it. When they told me that it was Tagore who had written it I visualised him to be a 6 year old boy just like me but dressed like a prince.  I asked to see a picture of him. Imagine my shock when they showed me a picture of a rather Gandalf like gentleman in long flowing robes and a great white beard wearing a Fez! Looking back at it now, I think yes, I fell for it, I completely believed him. And I think thats the true test of a great artist.

© Pete Schiazza

BW:What influence has he had on your own work and on this piece?

AM:His pioneering spirit has influenced me. But above all it was his elegant and magical style. I feel Tagore in his infinite wisdom could see beyond the illusions of the mundane. He went beyond society's expectations. He could tell the difference between everyday reality and everlasting truth.Tagore wanted to experiment, his nature was playful and in his songs especially there was a hybrid and seamless blend of Bengali music tradition with Hindustani,Carnatic classical, Indian folkloric, and even western music technique and practice. He had the rare combination of being a Reinassance man and being well trained in the arts along with having a shamen like quality to channel truth, magic and beauty in a truly joyous and calm manner.

As far as I am aware, nobody was doing anything like Tagore in India, or maybe even the world at the time, and in such a vast scale. He wrote around 2230 songs along with countless poems, short stories, novels, plays, operettas and dance dramas. We always felt, if there is an emotional situation, Tagore had written about it and in a way that was unconventional for its time. His poetry hints at an inner divinity and rebellion against religious and social orthodoxy. For me, he was part of the movement in Bengal that promoted individualism and free thought. His work came from an almost childlike wisdom and was expressed in ways that were simple yet meaningful. Tagore himself maintained that his plays, were plays of feeling.  Now that I am rediscovering his work all over again, I see him hinting of the same high and lows that I experience on a daily basis as a dancer in London who's vision is to present temple dance and its practice in ways that are unorthodox but relevant all the same in society today. When we started creating this piece, I knew I did not want to simply try and imitate Tagore and create movement for his music with tried and tested methods. I feel Tagore would have wanted us to have created something unique and unconventional that came from an authentic place. A piece that would try and engage the audience and portray the emotional truth behind his philosophy and poetry, despite the fact that it is sung in Bengali for Western audiences in London.

BW:Song of the City looks to explore themes of duality between Light and Dark, West and East, Self and Other, could you talk us through these themes and why they became prominent in the end piece?

AM:Mira's inspiration came from the black and white aesthetic behind many of Tagore's paintings. She wanted the piece to reflect that. I interpreted black and white as duality or polarity. And the whole idea slowly started revealing itself. Through the help of the noted Tagore translator and historian, William Radice, we found Tagore’s poem Song Of The City. In this he presents an experience of the vast metropolis that is London not unlike our own today. In the poem he has a love hate relationship with a city that is ever changing and multi-dimensional. There was also the dual roles of Tagore the man and Tagore the artist. The man who took care of his family land and worked on several welfare projects for farmers in Silaidaha in Bangladesh. There was also Tagore the artist who managed to write poetry on a daily basis who would become a Nobel Laureate. He seems to me a being who had achieved a near perfect synthesis of creative and executive powers.  As Londoners and especially as artists, I feel we strive to find this balance ourselves.Taking Tagore’s exploration of duality in these songs, and from his philosophies and sketches as inspiration, Song of the City explores the duality of light and dark and romantic and realist.

BW:The premier took place behind the bustling streets of the capital in the vault at the Southwark Playhouse. What was it about the space for you that embodied the themes and ideas you are exploring?

AM:The atmospheric and eeriely appropriate Southwark Playhouse Vaults with its two parallel tunnels reflect the exploration of this duality.  The vault itself represented to us a kind of inner chamber, like a rib cage that contains the heart or the Self. Here we find a woman striving to find harmony with her own creative and executive powers. We also find that these creative and executive forces are at times unwilling to meet. What happens when they do meet?

Dancers: (L-R) Gian Luca Loddo, Kamala Devam, Kim Amundsen                         © Pete Schiazza

BW:You work with an international and diverse group of performers and artists, how does a group like this form and what opportunities does this give to the overall choreographic process?

AM:As I work in a studio in London today with dancers from contrasting disciplines I see how simple yet impactful the words of Tagore are on them as we create movement together derived from his music and words. I also cannot help but notice the everyday drama and choreography that seems to pulse in the veins of the city itself that seems to make it go around. It seems to derive its strength from the inherent tension present in the contrasting and at times polar opposite characteristics that are its building blocks. I find this in its architecture, fashion, food, history and most of all its people. Executives rub shoulders with artists. Historical, elegant and ornate architecture coexists in the London skyline with bold and streamlined contemporary buildings. Sometimes these dual forces may exist in harmony and sometimes they may not. These contrasting view points and styles from vintage to contemporary, west to east all coexist and seem to make the city expand to create the universal metropolis we see before us today. Our choreographic output has emerged from this tension. Dancers trained in classical and contemporary, eastern and western styles were chosen specifically so we could use contrasting dance vocabulary as a tool to explore duality. Together we have derived movement from William Radice's translations of Tagore's poems and songs from a canon of 7 songs that I felt were suitable to create a framework for this piece.

BW:Recently you were shortlisted for a Matthew Bourne New Adventures Choreographer Award, which of the many accolades that you have received most stand out for you?
AM:Well it was not so much as an accolade as a chance to create and perform a piece specially for The Critics' Circle National Dance Award ceremony at Sadler's Wells in 2009. It was daunting but exciting to present my neo classical style of temple dance in front of the great and the good of the dance world. 10 years ago when I had done a workshop with Paul Taylor Dance Company and had taught the company members Bharatanatyam they had all said, how different, how much more grounded our style was from their style of classical ballet or even modern dance. At the end of my performance at the Wells in 2009, when Maina Gielgud and David Nixon came upto me and commented on the similarities and harmony between eastern and western dance styles that they had felt was present in my piece, I thought dancers have come a long way from only looking at differences to celebrating similarities. Michael Jackson and Kenny Ortega then saw this piece on youtube and I was offered to represent India in a speciality dance duet with Michael Jackson for his O2 shows.

BW:What drives you to choreograph?

AM:As a dancer I have always liked it when on the rare occasions, I almost got an out of body experience while dancing. To enjoy doing disciplined, precise and virtuoso movement in pure abandon is bliss. Dancing is the most transient of all the arts. It’s akin to creating an ice sculpture and watching it melt before your eyes. One cannot be too attached to it and yet one cannot help loving it all the same. I try and find this with my dancers in the studio. The result that I get from it is work that is both emotive and virtuoso, that builds up to moments of absolute stillness. So essentially the movement ends up being quite detailed and cardiovascular, sustaining big exhausting movement without losing any of the emotive details that are at the core of every move, and then building it all upto a moment when it can all turn into a picture. If the dancer or I have not found this inner stillness, we risk being carried away by the inertia of the movement/emotion and literally stumbling or losing balance and therefore losing the picture. Finding this stillness together with all my dancers is what drives me to choreograph at the moment, as I feel that only by achieving this onstage, the true action and reason will reveal itself to the audience.

     © Pete Schiazza

BW:You founded Ash Dance Theatre in January 2010, within which you have an educational strand inspired and dedicated by your childhood idol Michael Jackson- How important is education to your own company?

AM:Education is a crucial part of the company's work. Not simply because it allows us to reach out to different communities, to increase an awareness about our choreographic origins and practice. It is important for us to educate or create awareness of our work, because ideas that are born within a workshop or lecture demonstration setting, never fail to create concepts that feed into and further our own future artistic creations.

BW:What influence has Jackson had on your own life?

AM:This strand of the company is specifically dedicated to Jackson because, because like him we aim to inspire and excite, more than just educate or provide infotainment. Jackson had a profound influence on my own life for this very reason. Even in an over stimulated world where only the library is full of original ideas, he found his true voice and stayed authentic. Yes you could see Astaire, Fosse, Graham underneath all his moves/style but the way he did it was unique only to him. That inspired me subliminally at a very young age to do the same thing, to find my own voice as a dancer. This is why he has inspired people like me and specially children. Every workshop I take, if I do not create something to a Michael song, the children do not let me leave the building! I was chosen by him and Alif Sankey the associate producer to dance with him not because I do temple dance. There are millions of temple dancers to choose from. But the creative team behind This is it! felt that I was not restricted by its classicism. In fact that was exactly what freed me.  It was in the contract that I had to improvise and create with him. Not do a rehearsed and tried/tested pre choreographed routine. Tagore and Jackson may seem to be on complete opposite ends of the spectrum for most people. And yes, at first blush they are. One is a Nobel Laureate, the grand old man of India. The other is a moon walking, Grammy award winning force of nature. But they were both poets. Their outward achievement may seem very different, but to me they have both emerged from the same wonderful place. They both were inspired by nature and they both wanted to inspire and delight and share what they had found. One created Neverland, a Peter Pan like place to have fun and be inspired in and the other Shantiniketon, an outdoor university, literally meaning the abode of peace. So yes, funnily enough, both Tagore and Jackson have had a profound influence on me.

For more information on Ash’s company visit http://www.ashmukherjee.com/

For details of tour dates for Song of the City visit: http://www.akademi.co.uk/productions/songofthecity.php. The production will return to the Southwalk Playhouse in spring 2012.