Bharatanatyam dancer Anuradha Venkataram brings together themes of death and destruction of nature in her latest production ‘Bound by soil — A requiem for the forgotten’. It is set to be staged on August 14.
Around 2015, Anuradha came across a newspaper article that spoke of a Dalit family burying one of their kin by the banks of a river. “They did not have any other place for the burial. But the water washed the body back to the surface,” recalls the dancer, who set up Art Heart U and Mind (AHUM), her art collective, in 2015. Over the next few months, she chanced upon multiple articles of this nature.
This production is a response to those articles, she explains. It talks about how the marginalised do not even have space to bury their dead. By extension, the piece also delves into “how parasitic the human species
has become”.
The performance is inspired by Malayalam poet O N V Kurup’s work ‘Bhumikku Oru Charama Geetham’ (A dirge for the earth), published in 1984. The 45-minute performance does not follow a narrative but is a collection of abstract imagery using traditional Bharatanatyam.
Bound by soil — A requiem for the forgotten, August 14, 7 pm. At Seva Sadan, Malleswaram. Tickets online.