At a friend's 50th recently, I fell into conversation with a Gujarati friend of theirs about the power of the arts. I was still reeling from Songs of the Bulbul (see previous post), singing its praises, and mentioned Garbh, one of the performances at Ensemble Festival, organised by Certain Blacks, which I was hoping to catch the following day.
“Oh, you'll enjoy that,” he said,
and explained how Garba dancing is an expression of the soul of Gujarat, a
homage to the Divine Mother, the goddess Durga. Even the costume has something
in common with the whirling dervish, he told me. The skirt flares out on the
turn too. And as it turns out, Odedra’s family is also from Gujarat.
From there, the conversation kept spinning outwards. We talked about hand gestures, including the ones a student at school had been teaching me when we ran out of salsa moves in an impromptu outdoor workshop, riffing to Bad Bunny. We talked about how the Romani people migrated out of north-west India, and the gestures that seem to have travelled with them into flamenco. Conversation with me, it turns out, has a habit of finding its way back to Spanish, if not circus. There are artists out there already pioneering that Indo-Spanish fusion, like Kunal Om and bands such as Indialucia. And writing this now reminds me that the friend I went with to see Aakash Odedra perform is also a hispanophile. We had both agreed afterwards that Odedra had duende, that elusive, impulsive genius at the heart of flamenco. I’d forgotten that.
The performance of Garbh at
Ensemble Festival took place in the round, a large terracotta circle that accumulated mounds of sand. It began with a solemn procession, a body
carried in and laid down. There was a clay pot carried to the centre. I knew it
represented the womb, garbh being Sanskrit for womb, but it also
reminded me of a pot of ashes, and so somehow held both the beginning and the
end of life. The dancers dropped down into the sand and began to stir the heaps
in and around them, one dancer pouring sand over another as though anointing
them.
As the only male dancer walked
slowly around the circle, sand sieving through his hands, I was reminded of
Myles Macdonald in Kook Ensemble's Sand (Chapter 225 - click here). Gradually the others got to
their feet and began to circulate. As their skirts spun out, they revealed
seams of colour that matched their tops, each in soft earth hues of burnt red,
orange and olive green.
We are born of sand and clay,
they seemed to say.
A stray thought surfaced, of a K-drama I've dipped into recently, in which a genie refers to human beings as lumps of clay. It made me smile, then dissolved almost as soon as it arrived, because here, those "lumps" were sheer grace incarnate, propelled by their own version of duende as they spun freely, arms reaching up towards the sky. As they gained momentum, I had this sense that their bodies were literally becoming the music, their increasing intensity generating the energy of Shakti, the divine feminine energy.
It was joyful, celebratory and
powerful. Life-giving.
I find echoes here of another performance from the festival, Teatro en Movimiento Callejerx's Water Silhouettes (see Chapter252 - click here), and their incantations calling upon Yemayá, patron of the oceans, and Chalchiuhtlicue, goddess of the fresh waters. Here, Garbh was an invocation of Mother Earth. I loved that contrast in the festival programming.
The dancers’ flick of the skirts
and the percussive palm-clapping reminded me of flamenco, for sure, with its
own deep-rooted sacredness. But there was something different here. In Garbh,
the sacred feminine seemed to be what the dance itself was invoking, as they
held us within it, mesmerised. In the circular rhythm there was also a timelessness. I think now of a Sanskrit
word I didn't know at the time, having learned it only yesterday, samsara,
the wheel of life. That was where the performance was taking us.
The sun was blistering down and,
having stood at an angle to protect one side, I moved to the other side of the
ring to even out the burn, and sat on the floor. From behind me, moments later,
a grandmother figure processed slowly out.
Durga, perhaps, so central to Garba dance that she felt present throughout. Or simply the spirit of an ancestor being mourned, a grandmother figure. I couldn't say which, and perhaps it wasn't for me to know. She was certainly the embodiment of wisdom passed through generations and carried that weight in her tremendous dignity.
The four dancers were then in a
line, holding hands, the young girl at the front reaching out to her,
repeatedly swaying backwards onto those behind her, in surrender. Watching the
dynamic, I felt the loss in my own maternal line. I longed for my mother, my
grandmother. The stoicism of her posture reminded me of the strong women in my
own lineage, stretching all the way back to the Highlands.
As she left the scene, she passed
so close that I could have reached out and touched her. Of course I didn't. But
I wanted to, as though a touch of her hem could somehow connect me directly to
some deep maternal comfort. I realise how strange that may sound, unless you
share my childhood of Bible stories, and remember the woman in the crowd who
reaches out to touch Jesus's garment and feels that healing energy pass through
her. Different faiths, but the same human impulse, perhaps, to seek the sacred through touch.
Somehow the performance offered a harmonious way of reconciling ourselves to that. By the end, those who were not already on their feet to applaud quickly joined the standing ovation. Since then, I've kept finding echoes of Garbh. I've been sharing some footage, and a beautician at my local salon told me all about the three-day Sagar Patel Pre-Navratri Festival she attends every year ahead of the nine-day Navratri celebrations in October. I saw her photos of the outfits, videos from previous years, the colour, the sheer joy of the celebration, and found myself picturing her there with her family, dancing in all that colour.
Perhaps that is what I loved about Ensemble Festival. It kept throwing these unexpected connections into my path, bringing us all together, ensemble, celebrating the rich diversity all around us. Finding moments of connection in cultures other than our own and celebrating them.
Who is your community? Where do you belong?
Neti, neti. Not that, not that.
We are all. We are other. We are one.
As a languages teacher, it’s my day job to encourage students to explore other cultures and find points of connection, empathy and understanding. Perhaps that is why I keep returning to Garbh. It reminded me that those connections don't always come through words.
Garbh is coming to Greenwich and Docklands International Festival
on Saturday, 5th September.
https://festival.org/gdif/whats-on/garbh/
Dancers: Marta Beccatini, Meera Patel, Anaya Vasudha, Shahnal Shah, Mira Salat,
Shyam Dattani, Sundhiya Dattani, Anjali Tanna (R&D)
Choreography: Shyam Dattani and Mira Salat in collaboration with the dancers.
Choreographic Mentor: Urja Desai Thakore
Dramaturgy: Parbati Chaudhuri
Set Design: Simon Daw
Producer: Giulia Coti Zelati
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