I created Full(er) Circle at the invitation of Tramway, Glasgow in August 2022. I subsequently presented it in Calcutta in March 2023. With this, I returned to presenting a full evening’s kathak based solo – my first since August 2000. Departing from and returning to my ‘mothership’ of the kathak dance form in various ways, Full(er) Circle traces a journey asking what and who kathak can be. Forging fresh entry points – aesthetically, thematically, politically, socially – can we change and challenge ideas of what kathak is allowed to be and do?
Through various solo pieces, Full(er) Circle searches for new ways of departing from and returning to kathak, inviting fresh perspectives along the way. ‘Frame’ lays out a kathak canvas in the conversational style typical to a kathak recital; ‘Water Bodies’, a dance film made during the devastating second wave of the pandemic in India, responds to social, political and environmental concerns; ‘Arrival’ sketches various relationships we can have with a power larger than ourselves drawing on different genres and languages of Indian spiritual music and poetry.
Everything is created from the fundamentals of kathak; yet, is everything here kathak? Does the familiar become unfamiliar, asking us to re-align our relationship with it? As we travel full circle, do we find ourselves arriving somewhere else from where we began? How do we make a full circle full-er?
[all images on this page by Agnisha Basak, unless otherwise mentioned]
Vikram Iyengar 