Vikram Iyengar

This Foundation Project implemented by IFA under Workshops, Residencies, Seminars, will create four residential workshops for movement artists from East and North East India to inspire critical thinking while nurturing choreographic practices. Four artists from diverse backgrounds will restage their earlier pieces as they work with the participants of the workshop as facilitators. Vikram Iyengar is the Coordinator for this project. 

Vikram Iyengar is a dancer, choreographer, director, arts administrator, arts researcher, curator, and writer based in Kolkata. He is the co-founder and artistic director of Ranan Performance Collective, and also leads the Pickle Factory Dance Foundation – a hub for dance and movement practice and discourse. Vikram did his MA in Theatre and the World from University of Wales, Aberystwyth. He was an Arts Management Fellow of ARThink South Asia in 2013 and an IFA grantee under the Arts Practice programme in 2014. He has led workshops and taught internationally, including at the Tisch School of Arts, New York University. As an arts researcher and writer, he is contributing to the Oxford Handbook on Indian Dance forthcoming in 2022. Given Vikram’s experience he is best placed to be the Coordinator of this Foundation Project of IFA.

This project titled Spaces for Practice is for dance and movement artists from East and North-East India. It will comprise of residential workshops, including seminar-like open studios and process demonstrations. The vision of the project is to inspire critical thinking in movement practices, nurture choreographic practice, and develop articulation from a practitioner’s point of view. The workshops will be conceived as laboratory spaces for proposing experiments, free from the pressure of creating finished pieces.

The four workshops will be facilitated by four very different artists from different generations and regions, in order to inculcate new and ‘local’ ways of thinking about dance and movement in the region. It is envisioned that the project will contribute to the ecosystem at the registers of regional, national, as well as international. The four facilitators are Aseng Borang from Roing, Arunachal Pradesh, Joshua Sailo who divides his time between Aizawl, Mizoram and Bangalore, Kalamandalam Piyal Bhattacharya from Kolkata, and Preethi Athreya from Chennai. 

Aseng Borang, who has been trained in Shaolin Kung Fu, Yoga and contemporary movement techniques, will lead a small group of local dancers for a period of one month, to recreate her experimental movement piece Terms and Conditions Apply. It will be in the form of a participatory game of power, involving performers, audience members, and chairs. 

Joshua Sailo, will lead a group of 20 dancers of Kolkata, for a period of two weeks, to recreate the piece In C that he participated in while getting trained by Sasha Waltz in Berlin. This piece invites participants to think about individual and collective choices, as insights into democracy. 

Piyal Bhattacharya who has been trained in Kathakali, Dhrupad, Saraswati Veena, and Sanskrit Aesthetics, will lead a week-long intensive residency for mid-career practitioners from both Classical and contemporary backgrounds, including dancers, musicians, and martial artists, through reworking scenes from his performance titled Rasabalabuddhi.

Preethi Athreya will lead six to eight mid-career to senior practitioners for a period of two weeks, to remount her workshop Conditions of Carriage – The Jumping Project at a specific locations in the city of Kolkata. 

These four workshops will be conducted at overlapping time periods in separate spaces. There will be open studio days, which can be attended by registered participants, including members of the dance community in Kolkata. The workshops will culminate in process sharing, which comprises formal public presentations. The progress of the project will also be updated on an accessible blog. The culmination of the project will be presided over by the Project Coordinator with opening remarks and holding the proceedings together. 

The outcomes of the project are four intensive residencies and workshops for dance and movement artists, culminating in formal public presentations, along with a textual body of analytical documentation of the process, and a blog. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be photographs, audio-visual documentation of the residencies and workshops, process documents, and the link to the blog along with an offline version of the blog.

This project suitably addresses the framework of IFA’s Arts Practice programme in the manner in which it attempts to bring together movement artists from different parts of India to nurture choreographic practices for dancers and cultural practitioners of different generations in East and North East India, by providing a safe learning environment. 

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.