Daniel Galaska, a native West Texan, has been residing in Kalikapur, the unofficial medical hub of Kolkata, since February. Within six weeks of his second visit, he feels at home.
Trained in ballet, tap, foklorico and Polish contemporary dance, and member of the Slaski Teatr Tanca Dance Company of Poland, choreographer Galaska met Sudarshan Chakrabarty, creative director of Sapphire Creations, at the Silesian dance festival few years back. Even as they gelled, and even after having past experience of working with international choreographers such as Mihai Mihalcea (Romania), Sigga Soffia Nielsdottir (Iceland), Victor Ma (Hong Kong) and Idan Cohen (Israel), Galaska struggled with culture shock during his first visit to the city. So he decided to return once more, in search of universal commonality.
Coincidentally, when entrusted with the 7th International Choreographers’ Program of Sapphire, he resorted to a medical theme. While explaining ‘Common’, the title of the evening’s repertoire presented at the American Center on March 13, Galaska insisted on the most tangible reality shared across cultures — the human anatomy. “Our muscles can only pull. Through exploration of this natural kinesis, dancers can make their bodies longer and transcend themselves,” he elaborates. Sapphire dancer Nikita Bhattacharya fuses this principle into her brief bharatnatyam moves as she bewails “I’ve been fettered by ‘classical’ for seven years. There is no individuality in it” in Bengali. Galaska communicates through the straight lines formed by her outstretched arms and the arched spine in the process. As Chakrabarty believes, “Often the aharya (ornamentations) of classical Indian dance curtail the intensity of a dancer’s emotions. That’s why we emphasise the mental process more than frozen forms. It is impossible to assert one’s individuality without indigenous elements. So, the point of contemporary dance is to assimilate divergent traditions into formless expressions.” As dancers ‘react’ to everyday situations through physical skits, Galaska’s lean minimalism focuses on showcasing mysteries of the organism in that context.
In a sequence of ‘Common’, dancer Koushik Das recreates frustrations related to corruption and claustrophobia in a traffic jam, juxtaposing colloquial dialogue and cacophonic body swings. As his colleagues try to hush him up, Das improvises and brings dance as an art form outside the idyllic arena of the apolitical. One can identify the rhythms in his sway, as the performance remains structured around interplay between order and chaos, the essence of Galaska’s technique.
In a way Galaska’s obsession with anatomy, individuality and a simultaneous quest for the universal reminds one of Leonardo da Vinci and renaissance realism. Yet Galaska refuses to call it rediscovery of the body: “When I started dancing at 20, I thought I knew my body. Later I realised discovering your body is a regular meditative process, since bodies change, and so do its idioms. Often the very process of this discovery affects changes. Yet, you can’t deny the body’s materiality.” Perhaps in the context of postmodern emphasis on images and extra-bodily lures like consumerism and silicone implants, recourse to bare essentials like bones, tissue and the mind is an alternative globalisation worth pursuing.