IGNITE! Festival of Contemporary Dance was started in 2010, the 3rd Edition is taking place in New Delhi. It is organised by the GATI Dance Forum, which works to create a vibrant engagement with contemporary dance through interrogation, experimentation, innovation and reflection.
This year the biennial is back with a much larger and ambitious programme showcasing a mix of established and emerging practitioners in contemporary Indian dance and dance thinking. The week-long festival will feature performances by Indian and International artists.
The Festival began with Terence Lewis Contemporary Dance Company's Scrambled Eggs, a two hour contemporary piece which brings together theatre and dance in which 8 stories. The enthralled audience cheered, laughed and cried along with the performance. Terence Lewis was the 'Sutradhar' and he included the audience in the narrative.
IGNITE! Is showcasing performances borne out of cultural exchange between Indian and international artists and steeped in the South Asian context. This is highlighted in Mithuna by Annette Leday/Keli Company; Made in Bangladesh by Helena Waldmann and Vikram Iyengar; Super Ruwaxi: Origins by Post Natyam Collective and Traitriot by Venuri Perrera.
"We believe that dance must be a part of all of us! The festival aims to take dance out of its comfort zone and to the people. This year, apart from multiple venues spread out in the city we will also perform in parks, open markets and gallery spaces. Contemporary Indian dance has been our focus from the very beginning. The form or the content is Indian; either people are making work using Indian vocabulary or it is by performers working in India. We are expanding to South Asia as we have the same cultural resources and similar issues. We have focused a lot on collaborations by inviting cross cultural exchanges. We also always look at established as well as emerging artists, because we feel that there is a lot to be gained from this exchange." Mandeep Raikhy, Managing Director, Gati Dance Forum & Virkein Dhar, Festival Director, IGNITE!
For the first time IGNITE! will also be hosting a 3 day conference titled 'Joining the Dots: Points of Shift, Pause, Discontinuity and Rupture' which is led by practitioners. The focus will be on the 'body' and further maps the trajectories of dance across forms, genre and geography.
In addition, there will also be film screenings 'Of Spaces and Identities'; the films look at questions of identity and geography, followed by a conversation with Bharat Sharma, Director, Bhoomika Creative Dance Centre.
To continue Gati Dance Forums' mission of nurturing a sustainable environment for contemporary dance practice, several Master-classes and Workshops also form part of the programme and are being led by known artists including Aditi Mangaldas, Kate Elswit, Rani Nair, Saju Hari etc.
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