Dance
Inter_rupted
Tramway, Glasgow
Mary Brennan
****
AFTERWARDS, you realise how significant that low-lying dash in Inter_rupted is, and how - like a sigh, mid-sentence - it can either translate as an enigmatic break between moments in time, or as a bridge between them. If the title invites reflections on its construction, then so too does the metaphysical imagery that Aditi Mangaldas weaves into her choreography.
Her gift for embedding traditional movement within a contemporary context sees the classic whirling Kathak spins become a recurring motif for the whirligig of time: each swift, precise turn echoes the earth’s rotation - another day gone, a step that can’t be taken back.
Elsewhere, the cupping of hands hints at the gathering up of memories, of life energy, only for fingers to part and the achievements to trickle away like dust. Mangaldas, now (unbelievably) in her fifties, has poured her own awareness of time passing, of age changing her perspectives on life and mortality, into a company piece that sets individual adjustments in pace - a sudden pause interrupts the movement flow, the dancer is caught in fragile immobility - against vivid glimpses of shared relationships in duets and ensembles.
If her own haunting solo explores in expressive detail what happens when the insistent rhythms - of the on-stage drum, or of the heart-beat - are fractured, her seven superb dancers echo her intrinsic concerns with vignettes of love, loss and life-affirming inner strength. Golden light floods the stage, then fades. The pale cloth walls occasionally reveal shadow figures - perhaps the possible other ‘selves’ that belong to roads not travelled. Layers of saffron robes peel away, every quiver of pliant limb is highlighted; Mangaldas and her dancers reveal more than virtuosity, they reveal the poetic soul of this profoundly beautiful and meaningful dance.
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