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Liminality

As far as my memory serves me I always remember myself running and doing stuff all the time. It has kept my mind active and agile but I think I have not allowed my mind to dwell in a place...just sit and mull. My choreographies are sparks that come to me which gets spurred by a body in front of me ready to be moulded, (a guinea pig in the form of my student with utmost faith in my madness), a music already available to me ready to be interpreted and more often than not a program date ahead of me which needs all these resources to come together to produce meaningful work....do you sense the urgency in this kind of work...the power of NOW that has always propelled me to produce...I have been thrilled by what I have created....I cannot say that there was no thi nking but this thinking is like what goes in a person's mind just before she goes on stage for an improv...every piece of creativity for me is improv...I improv on my student's body then it becomes a trained piece for them...is that how everyone creates? The most difficult is when I need to create something for myself...I struggle to dance a pre-choreographed piece. I cannot have everything fixed before I go on stage it kills the fun I have with myself on stage. There has to be the adrenalin rush to pull something off on stage, I need to keep myself amused and interested, yes I am performing for myself. Yeah! Sometimes it backfires and those are times when I think, well maybe I should have gotten it all down before going on stage but I cant stay true to it, it is like they say a drunkard's oath ...I cannot say all my dances are improvs...there is a structure, but there are lot of things that are not spelt out. Sometime I feel I am rebelling, I just don't want to do what the music wants me to do or I just don't want my brain on day 1 to dictate what I want to do on day 10. Thinking about it for 10 days has given me a different way of knowing what I want to present which I feel is always richer, do I sacrifice that thought just because I committed to a certain way of doing it on day1? wait! I am not exactly improvising, am I? I am actually allowing my choreography to evolve during my rehearsals...but why do I have this defiance to fix it even on the performance day?! My performance in several ways is also a rehearsal where I am still exploring my work. Well but now it is not the same because you have an audience, orchestra whom I have paid with my hard earned money and I cannot afford to be playing on stage!! It is no more about me and the game that I play with my art, it is weighted down by these temporal restrictions....do I just stick to my garage and rehearsals and not venture onto the stage? Well no! I love performing for an audience, the pressure of the situation and the urgency the ambience offers has always been a catalyst and an invigorating pill to my creative process....

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