Madhushree Basu

This Foundation Project implemented by IFA under Workshops, Residencies, Seminars, will create a month long technical residency aiming to engage with either one choreographer working with an ensemble, or two dance-makers creating solos, followed by a week long workshop addressing the role of the contemporary body, movement and improvisation in theatre and dance. Madhushree Basu is the Coordinator for this project. 

Madhushree Basu is a contemporary dancer, a choreographer, a self-taught illustrator and a comics maker, based in Chennai. She has been trained in Kathak and completed a Prabhakar Degree from Prayag Sangeet Samiti, Kolkata under Srilekha Saha. She practiced Creative Dance in Udayan, Kolkata under Mamata Shankar. She was trained in Mohiniyattam under Gopika Varma in Dasyam School of Mohiniyattam, and in contemporary dance under Padmini Chettur. Madhushree obtained her PhD in Mathematics in 2013 from Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, As a contemporary dancer, she has performed in many prestigious events and festivals, including Gender Bender (Bangalore), Adishakti (Pondicherry), Uday Shankar Dance Festival (Kolkata), ImPulsTanz Dance Festival  (Vienna), Singapore International Festival of Arts (Singapore), Kochi Muziris Biennale (Fort Kochi), Indonesian Dance Festival (Jakarta), among many others. Given Madhushree’s experience she is best placed to be the Coordinator of this Foundation Project of IFA.

This project that involves a month long contemporary dance technical residency, followed by a week long critical workshop, aims at elaborating on the meaning of contemporaneity in contemporary dance. The question of the ‘contemporary’ will be unpacked with concepts like, contemporaneity as a passage with time, contemporaneity as a diverse, fluid, critical, equal space informed by its ‘internationalism’, contemporaneity as a selective rejection of tradition, and contemporaneity as a heterogeneous/ urban space in the context of contemporary dance in India. 

Through the residency and the workshop, the project will unpack the following artistic concerns in contemporary dance: interdisciplinarity, improvisation and site. Interdisciplinarity is a significant artist concern in contemporary dance, as there is creative interdependence between contemporary dance, music, theatre and visual arts through the sharing of knowledge, practices and technologies with each other. The project will also foreground the aspect of improvisation in contemporary dance, in the context of its intersection with related art forms. The site where a piece of contemporary dance takes place is important in framing the context, spatial dynamics and meaning of the space. The project will probe the question of site as a meaning-making entity, through the residency and the workshop.  

The residency is scheduled to happen post February 2024 after an open selection process, with either one choreographer working with an ensemble or two dance-makers creating solos. This will be followed by a week-long workshop that will happen in mid-March 2024, with 15 to 20 participants selected through a call for applications. 

The outcomes of the project would be a draft performance out of the residency programme and a presentation out of the workshop that will be shared in March Dance 2024 at Basement 21. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be photographs and audio-visual documentation of the residency and workshop. 

This project suitably addresses the framework of IFA’s Arts Practice programme in the manner in which it attempts to bring together dance-makers from different generations, irrespective of gender, class, caste, ability and language backgrounds, to nurture a deep engagement with practice that is intensely physical as well as intellectual, through forging new artistic partnerships.

IFA will ensure that the implementation of this project happens in a timely manner and funds expended are accounted for. IFA will also review the progress of the project at midterm and document it through an Implementation Memorandum. After the project is finished and all deliverables are submitted, IFA will put together a Final Evaluation to share with Trustees.

This project is made possible with support from Sony Pictures Entertainment Fund.