THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: French dancer and choreographer Annette Leday, whose oeuvre expanded the scope of Kathakali at international stage, was in the city to showcase her latest work ‘Mithuna’.
Conceptualised as dialogues between cultures, she terms the performance as a physical poetry that blends the techniques of Kathakali and French ballet.
The concept contemplates gender and sex; the sex of words, the sex of moments and the sex of beings. It involves three senior artists - Helene Courvoisier, K Unnikrishnan Nair and Sadanam Manikandan.
The narrative is kept to the minimum and the focus is on the flow of energies and emotions of the performers. Annette says the concept involves formation of something new from the culmination of two different aspects, which she calls duos.
“It represents the way I see human relationships. There is harmony, violence, creativity, positivity and negativity,” she says.
The background music has cello and chenda and tactfully used bird chirps. There is no live music, instead the records of music director Ghedalia Tazartes has been used.
The script for the performance was prepared by Lokenath Bhattacharya, a Sanskrit scholar from West Bengal. The performance lasted just under an hour and it was conducted in association with Alliance Francaise de Trivandrum.
Mithuna was presented in during IGNITE! festival at Delhi, during last January and in April at the famous Le Theatre du Soleil. It was first performed in Kerala on September 30 for a private audience at Thrissur. In April next year, it will be performed in Paris.
Annette Leday is the director of La Compagnie Annette Leday/Keli who specialised in inter-cultural contemporary creation, with a focus on the dance and theatre traditions of India and France.
After training as an actress in France, she journeyed to India in 1978, studying Bharatanatyam and Kathakali in Chennai. She then spent several years in rural Kerala, practicing and performing Kathakali with the Sadanam and Kalamandalam institutions.
La Compagnie Annette Leday/Keli became famous with their creation of Kathakali-King Lear. This ShakespeareÂ’s adaptation was realised with the help of renowned Kathakali masters at the time.
It has been played more than 70 times in Asia and Europe during big festival (Edinburgh, Shakespeare’s Globe etc).