CHENNAI: The world’s talking awards, and this lesser known rather modest frontier is doing its bit too. The Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards (META) has easily been known as the highest accord for a stage production in recent times in the country. Nominated for the same is The Absent Lover by Chennai’s own Preeti Vasudevan, dancer, actor and artistic director of Thresh, the dance company has bagged the award for the Best Choreography. “We came to know about our nomination only in February. It came as quite a surprise. We had applied for META and forgotten until we discovered we were nominated for six categories- Best Production, Choreography, Direction, Lighting, Set design and Music”, says Preeti.
The Absent Lover, which was performed in the city last year as a part of Prakriti Foundation’s Tree of Life Festival, is a play inspired by a fifth century play, Vikramorvishyam by Kalidasa. Involving four performers, the play is a bilingual dance-drama production. “Kalidasa’s poems always connect with nature and an eternal search. We are always searching for something in life, this search and chase traps us in a labyrinth of several other things,” Preeti explains. The play, according to her, is both a philosophical and literal manifestation of this constant quest going from a normal to a very fantastical world almost like a fairy tale, leading into layers of creative craziness until it finds its own balance.
Preeti’s basics lie in Bharatnatyam, a style she was trained in since childhood. From solo performances she moved on to dance drama and established Thresh, a company that functions virtually with a base in New York and Chennai, developing performances and educational programs for those who want to learn dance. Their website also hosts a virtual dance tutorial called Dancing for the gods at www.threshdance.org. “Bharatnatyam itself is more dance theatre except there’s no spoken text. My production has dialogues and it felt very appropriate to put them in. The play directly involves the audience with monologues directed at them,” Preeti reveals. A mix of dance and text woven into a story with live baul music in the backdrop The Absent Lover is certainly a concoction of cultures if not mediums. Anticipating a tour next year, Preeti says, “We look forward to touring Chennai. We received a lot of response for our earlier performance here through calls and mails, the reviews were good too and the people here seemed to show a lot of curiosity as they are familiar with the medium and styles". The Absent Lover also received the awards for Best Set Design and Best Lighting making it a total of three awards and standing second only to Rajat Kapoor's Hamlet- The Clown Prince which received the highest, four awards.
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