Movement becomes the maze
Ancient stories breathe through our skin, finding a way to beat through the chest of anyone sitting in the dark. We carry these old wars with us, knowing the sharp edges of a sacrifice long before the curtain goes up. The opening night of the Kendra Dance Festival at Kamani Auditorium brought us back to that lethal geometry of the Mahabharata.
This year’s programming pulls together a curated selection from the Kendra Dance Repertory, striking a balance between long-standing tradition and fresh renewal.
It revisits established works alongside reworked productions, where choreography and stage design keep the soul of the original work intact.
Chakravyuh stands as a retelling that captures the suffocating pressure of a trap. Seeing Abhimanyu march toward that swirling formation brought a dead silence to the room. Shashidharan Nair’s choreography relies on the raw, heavy power of Mayurbhanj Chhau, using those martial movements to pull a whole battlefield out of thin air. Every leap toward the centre carried a raw bravery, a young life held up against a mathematical nightmare.
Shobha Deepak Singh and Gauri S Keeling have built a space where these epics stay alive through a quiet, constant renewal. The ensemble moves in a way that turns their bodies into the very walls of the maze. They shift in a rhythmic, terrifying pattern that leaves the hero isolated.
The music builds a sprawling landscape that vibrates through the bones of the audience. You catch that exact, hollow isolation that comes from being hemmed in by thousands while being entirely alone in the heart of the struggle. The performance draws on a vocabulary of movement that pulls the fluid grace of Odissi into the heavy weight of Kathakali. Every single shift in weight signals the rising stakes.
The stage setup allows the space to warp, catching that sense of total confusion found in the middle of the battle. As the Kaurava warriors tightened their circle, the drums picked up a frantic pace that mirrored the racing hearts in the seats. The Pandavas were stopped dead at those gates and the tension sat in your chest like something physical. By the time the final moments came, the whole auditorium had gone completely still. Monuments fall apart over centuries but the courage of a lone boy gets cut so deep into a city’s memory that even the stones carry it forward. This theatre holds that record and keeps it from being lost.
