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Last night, I watched the Janak Khendry Dance Company perform Chandrakauns, Dream of a Drunken God, and Gayatri. With a few notable exceptions, glittering like diamonds in a dung-heap, it was one of the worst dance shows I've ever seen.
The first dance, Chandrakauns, ostensibly tells the story of the Moon, his beautiful wife the Moon Light, and his children the Moon Rays being the link between heaven and earth. The stage is set with an enormous disk of white on the floor, shaded just so to look like the full moon. It looks pretty nice. But then the dancers come out and spoil it. Well, that's not entirely fair. The wife of the Moon (Kala Vageesan) is a good dancer, and I ameliorated my shocked senses by watching her. I hoped to see more of her throughout the evening, but this was her only performance.
Her presence doesn't stop the choreography from being possibly the most boring dances I've ever seen. Indeed, for all you MST3K fans, this is the Sandy Frank production of dance, with interminable walking scenes. And running scenes. At times, it felt like I was watching dancers do laps around the moon. The story is incomprehensible from the dance (I only know what it's about from the programme notes), and several of the dancers kept fudging their choreography.
The music is ok, but the bridges between scenes are extraordinarily cheesy, with tinkling Wayne's World-esque dream sequence sound effects. The first time I heard it, it made me cringe a little. But it kept continuing. Those twinkling sounds must repeat themselves a dozen times or more throughout the performance, and I sunk deeper and deeper into my chair, curling in on myself, foetus-like.
At the end of Chandrakauns, we were asked to keep in our seats for a little while as the stage was prepared for the next dance. This wouldn't have been too bad, except that we sat in our seats for about ten minutes as the moon was torn off the floor with very loud duct-tape ripping noises. Why this couldn't have been an intermission, I don't know. It is very amateurish, and not the sort of thing you'd expect at a $35 per ticket show. There isn't even any house music to drown out the noises. We all just sat there uncomfortably, stunned after the bad introductory dance, hearing the ripping sounds and hoping beyond hope that the next dance would be better.
It was somewhat better. Well, except for Janak Khendry himself, the artistic director and lead dancer of the dance company. I just don't get it. In the program, his biography is the most extensive. He has trained at prestigious schools in India, and with influential and well-known teachers of Bharatanatyam, Kathak, and Manipuri. Maybe once upon a time he could dance, but he really can't now. For someone who's danced since 1955, he has no stage presence or finely-tuned muscular control. His hands and arms are limp and lifeless. His sense of rhythm is abysmal, and he rarely keeps on beat. He can't keep up with the fast parts of the choreographies, and just skips them as the other dancers in the troupe perform them simultaneously. His facial expressions are wanting, and his face is occasionally wracked with twitching little grimaces which I think are supposed to be smiles.
Maybe he knows he sucks.
I felt embarrassed for him. It hurt me to watch him. Photos of him in the 1950s show someone with a lot more expression, and a New York Times review of him in 1978 praises his "particularly fluid arms." Maybe he's been ill, these past few years. I just don't know. Something terrible has happened, to be sure. It's sad. In Dream of a Drunken God, he looks like an extra from classic Star Trek traipsing around the stage. For a little while, while acting out the drinking of copious amounts of alcohol, he's not too bad. But then he starts to suck again. Fortunately, he is joined by Anthony Guerra, and I had something good to watch. Guerra has a commanding stage presence. He fills the stage with majesty. His movements are controlled and precise, from his convincing fish mudra (the name of which is unknown to me), to the flare of his nostrils and the vibration of total body tension as he acted out a creation scene.
The narrative of the choreography is confusing. It is more or less a battling banjos story, with two gods trying to outdo one another. But somehow, the two enemies become fast friends before once again becoming enemies, with no apparent reason for it. It is utterly baffling.
During the intermission, I toyed with the idea of not coming back to see the third performance. But![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
f00dave's mother has never a big dance production before (aside from the great Karen Kain, back in the day), and is enjoying herself. So we stay.
It's just as well, too, because Gayatri is the strongest choreography of the night. At first, we are worried, because the introduction seems like a more ornate bit of the sign-language karaoke of Napoleon Dynamite. But the next two parts are interesting, with clear narrative structures, and at least some good dancing. Mala Pisharody is bang-on with her head and eye movements, and Sinthujaa Jeyarajah is impeccable with the precision of her arm and hand movements. She's inspired me to drill harder on my arm movements, and to practice the alapadma mudra Neefa taught me this week....
This choreography is the oldest of the three, and I think it's much more familiar to each of the dancers.
So all in all, I wouldn't mind seeing some of these dancers again, but not this company as a whole.
The first dance, Chandrakauns, ostensibly tells the story of the Moon, his beautiful wife the Moon Light, and his children the Moon Rays being the link between heaven and earth. The stage is set with an enormous disk of white on the floor, shaded just so to look like the full moon. It looks pretty nice. But then the dancers come out and spoil it. Well, that's not entirely fair. The wife of the Moon (Kala Vageesan) is a good dancer, and I ameliorated my shocked senses by watching her. I hoped to see more of her throughout the evening, but this was her only performance.
Her presence doesn't stop the choreography from being possibly the most boring dances I've ever seen. Indeed, for all you MST3K fans, this is the Sandy Frank production of dance, with interminable walking scenes. And running scenes. At times, it felt like I was watching dancers do laps around the moon. The story is incomprehensible from the dance (I only know what it's about from the programme notes), and several of the dancers kept fudging their choreography.
The music is ok, but the bridges between scenes are extraordinarily cheesy, with tinkling Wayne's World-esque dream sequence sound effects. The first time I heard it, it made me cringe a little. But it kept continuing. Those twinkling sounds must repeat themselves a dozen times or more throughout the performance, and I sunk deeper and deeper into my chair, curling in on myself, foetus-like.
At the end of Chandrakauns, we were asked to keep in our seats for a little while as the stage was prepared for the next dance. This wouldn't have been too bad, except that we sat in our seats for about ten minutes as the moon was torn off the floor with very loud duct-tape ripping noises. Why this couldn't have been an intermission, I don't know. It is very amateurish, and not the sort of thing you'd expect at a $35 per ticket show. There isn't even any house music to drown out the noises. We all just sat there uncomfortably, stunned after the bad introductory dance, hearing the ripping sounds and hoping beyond hope that the next dance would be better.
It was somewhat better. Well, except for Janak Khendry himself, the artistic director and lead dancer of the dance company. I just don't get it. In the program, his biography is the most extensive. He has trained at prestigious schools in India, and with influential and well-known teachers of Bharatanatyam, Kathak, and Manipuri. Maybe once upon a time he could dance, but he really can't now. For someone who's danced since 1955, he has no stage presence or finely-tuned muscular control. His hands and arms are limp and lifeless. His sense of rhythm is abysmal, and he rarely keeps on beat. He can't keep up with the fast parts of the choreographies, and just skips them as the other dancers in the troupe perform them simultaneously. His facial expressions are wanting, and his face is occasionally wracked with twitching little grimaces which I think are supposed to be smiles.
Maybe he knows he sucks.
I felt embarrassed for him. It hurt me to watch him. Photos of him in the 1950s show someone with a lot more expression, and a New York Times review of him in 1978 praises his "particularly fluid arms." Maybe he's been ill, these past few years. I just don't know. Something terrible has happened, to be sure. It's sad. In Dream of a Drunken God, he looks like an extra from classic Star Trek traipsing around the stage. For a little while, while acting out the drinking of copious amounts of alcohol, he's not too bad. But then he starts to suck again. Fortunately, he is joined by Anthony Guerra, and I had something good to watch. Guerra has a commanding stage presence. He fills the stage with majesty. His movements are controlled and precise, from his convincing fish mudra (the name of which is unknown to me), to the flare of his nostrils and the vibration of total body tension as he acted out a creation scene.
The narrative of the choreography is confusing. It is more or less a battling banjos story, with two gods trying to outdo one another. But somehow, the two enemies become fast friends before once again becoming enemies, with no apparent reason for it. It is utterly baffling.
During the intermission, I toyed with the idea of not coming back to see the third performance. But
f00dave's mother has never a big dance production before (aside from the great Karen Kain, back in the day), and is enjoying herself. So we stay.It's just as well, too, because Gayatri is the strongest choreography of the night. At first, we are worried, because the introduction seems like a more ornate bit of the sign-language karaoke of Napoleon Dynamite. But the next two parts are interesting, with clear narrative structures, and at least some good dancing. Mala Pisharody is bang-on with her head and eye movements, and Sinthujaa Jeyarajah is impeccable with the precision of her arm and hand movements. She's inspired me to drill harder on my arm movements, and to practice the alapadma mudra Neefa taught me this week....
This choreography is the oldest of the three, and I think it's much more familiar to each of the dancers.
So all in all, I wouldn't mind seeing some of these dancers again, but not this company as a whole.
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no subject
Date: 2006-11-10 06:16 pm (UTC)From:Hypatia
http://www.jkdanceco.org/jkdc_frameset.htm
no subject
Date: 2006-11-10 06:23 pm (UTC)From:Here's hoping I get to see more primo Indian dance. This performance was just sad.
Good afternoon
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