Europe PhotoBlog

Amsterdam Flower Market, it’s a bit different to the way things run in India, much more scientific!

In Bruges, Belgium, Michelangelo’s ‘Virgin with Child’

We had a private tour of Nederlands Dans Theatre and watched a company class. Later that evening we also saw the premiere of the Up& Coming Choreographer’s project

La Tour Eiffel, Paris Moments, Definitely filled me with wonder

It was a wonderful day at Musee de Louvre!

Vondel Park, Amsterdam, Children’s Live art sculpture

Silk workshop, live painting, in Lyon,France.

Italian style architecture, Lyon,France.

Le Quai Forum, Centre National de Danse Contemporaine (CNDC), Angers,France.

Tools from our Choreography workshop with Lisa Spackman, Artistic Director Two-Thirds SKy, U.K., at CNDC, World Dance Alliance GLobal Summit

South-Asian delegation at The World Dance Alliance Global Summit (WDAGS) , July 6th-11th 2014, Angers, France.

At NDT, with dance colleague Evelien Maes, posing next to a portrait of choreographer Jiri Kylian!

 

Moving forward…

Getting things together. I haven’t been able to write as much in the last few weeks, because of quite a busy schedule. I feel my mind multi-tasking different roles and job titles. I am happy to say the choreography showcase with the students of Rhythmosaic went very well. My dancers(Mahabub Hossain, Tahnun Ahmedi, Victor Md.Ali, Sayani Chakraborty, Rajni Thapa and Mekhola Bose) all worked very hard and we had a strong team spirit that gave power to the performance of ‘Under Face’.  The term ends and a new one begins. I briefly met the new batch of students and I’m looking forward to what the new session will bring. I get to be a full-time faculty member and I know that working with the dancers over time will be a valuable process. I have something of a break till mid-July and then start dance work again.

But for now, just around the corner I am fully occupied with all that needs to be done for a solo exhibition. It’s exciting and a different kind of production process. I have to engage with people in similar ways to which I would as a choreographer and artistic director. The interactions I have with people, in the role of an artist, is much more than I had expected or imagined. There are many, many decisions to be taken and alot of follow up to manage. It’s stimulating to know this aspect of an artist’s job, but it can also be quite demanding. For the next time round, I will have a more realistic timeline for getting things done, and particularly more accustomed to how things work in Kolkata. Still, for a first time, everything is shaping up well, and I am very excited for what the outcome of  all this next week.

Paints please…

I’m often asked how I started to paint. Yes, my life has led me to interesting new places. If I never thought I would be a choreographer one day, I certainly had no inkling that I’d paint too. It’s has been a delightful and a rather raw process discovering this in me. And when I look back, I still can’t quite believe it.

Here’s an attempt to explain how. It was the summer of 2010 in Taipei, the month of June( the very month that this year, four years later, I will have my first solo exhibition), that it began. I was around artist friends alot that past semester and even more so that summer, and one such friend talked about the possibility of one day there being a book written on my life, a book filled with colors and pictures that told my story, that were vibrant and full of energy. I found the idea fascinating, but dismissed it. Two nights later, I found myself restless at night, unable to sleep. The only solution in the morning seemed to  be to go to the supermarket, buy some colours, and start painting.

I started with watercolours, painting in a garage. Then later explored oils and acrylics on canvas in a friend’s house, she watched amazed as I playfully mixed the colors from instinct. I like to have music on when I paint, I usually sing if I can’t play music. I have worked with pastels too, and colour pencils. Different places affect the kind of painting I create. Israel was a birthing of many more new colours and voices in my art. And perhaps refinement came along the way, after many many many sketches and paintings that I created from a natural effortless zest. It’s been a bold adventure. And this is still just the beginning…

Spray, spray, spray…

The last bit of varnishing is left. Just over six months of painting and I am the delighted creator of thirty canvases. It’s been easy and hard, but I’m glad it’s now nearing to completion. My exhibition dates should be finalized soon and my very first gallery showing is just around the corner. This is a dream come true. Yes, just the process of it is a dream, good and bad, yet having that ethereal other worldly something of the surreal and wonderful to it quality about it. I think the term for so many (‘dream come true’) is quite a cliche and for some it hits  face of hard disbelieving cynicism…but for the one who claims it, if in earnest, the good feeling woven into it all, is special in a way that’s hard to express.

But back to art and painting. From a self-taught artist, I have definitely learnt alot in this process and over the last almost four years. While my natural instincts lead me, watching others at work or looking at finished paintings, as well as research from time to time informs me well. But the best way to learn deep long lasting lessons is when you learn by doing, or rather learn not to do or do differently. Mistakes are priceless. I truly value them. They make understanding sink in with deep clarity. I enjoy varnishing, it requires different things of you to painting. It’s all a very physical process though. Artists who are painters need to be strong. Inside and out.

Well, a few more weeks to go, I will till then spray, spray, spray…