Jumping project gives dance a lift

“We always see dancers as these fine bodies that perform incredible acrobatic acts. But we never notice the functionality of these bodies. I wanted to explore this aspect of the body through this jumping project. Jumping is a protest by the body — against gravity. It is an act that is performed by dancers, athletes and martial artistes alike. But how the jump is made varies. How a child jumps when he/she is angry and how you jump with joy are different. The emotion that is triggered by jumping once and jumping twice is different. Similarly, the time lapse between each jump also employs different meanings to jumps. I wanted to explore this,” says Preethi. 

The ten performers of the piece come from diverse backgrounds like boxing, parkour, theatre and classical dance. Their ages too vary from 50s to 20s. “It took us a year to train them. We started with some breathing and posture exercises and later invited boxing and parkour trainers to devise a training system to ensure that the performers would not get hurt from the physical exertion and to teach them how to safely land back on the feet from a jump. The performers continue with parts of this training system even when the performance is over and they head back to their regular life. Then, from two weeks before the next performance, we once again train rigorously every day. It is an exhaustive choreography — both to perform and to watch,” she adds. 

Each viewer is expected to draw meanings from his own life to understand the jumps. “We specifically avoided music in the performance because of this. Music carries with it a certain connotation and the audience’s interpretation of the work will also be drawn from this setting. Aesthetic sounds  allow is more abstract. You see the performers gasping for air, sweating under pressure and this makes the viewers contemplate upon how their own bodies function,” she explains. Preethi devised the performance in 2016, but a year down the lane, the performance is still in demand across the country. They recently performed in London and is now preparing for an interactive session with school students in Ludhiana.