21 hours ago
- Entertainment
- New Indian Express
Astad Deboo: An Icon of Contemporary Indian Dance
This is for those who dance and those who watch; for innovators and classicists; for anyone who seeks to venture beyond the safety of what they have learnt. It's for those who seeks to venture beyond the safety of what they have learnt, risking censure in their search for something new that they can leave behind as a legacy. The writer, Ketu H Kartak, knew Astad Deboo. And that is the strength of the narrative. It follows Deboo closely through his many pathbreaking experimental shows and details the thought behind each show and the daring, unconventional movements, lighting, and sound effects included in these shows.
We also get a mosaic of Deboo, the man. Who even as a boy loved to climb to heights and balance precariously. A proclivity that would transform into performances on the Great Wall of China and the Champaner Fort in Gujarat, on top of a water tank and on rooftops, among others. Through his journeys, Deboo lived the halcyon life, travelling in trucks or getting a lift in a Mercedes; washing dishes, selling his blood for 17 dollars in Greece, sleeping in parks, and getting hauled up by the police. In three years he travelled through Europe, Japan and Southeast Asia, absorbing the pace, movements, and expressions in the dance forms across the nations. He picked up Kathakali in Kerala, José Limón's modern dance techniques in New York, and the rhythms of Brazilian music and dance in South America, blending it all, to carve his unique dance identity.
