Aavishkar & Random Dance at the Cervantino

As usual, the Cervantino dance programming is strong.

India always sends a group of dancers. My favorite in a half-dozen years was this year´s AAVISHKAR, a group of eight dancers from the states of Gujarat and Rajastan (West India, near the border with Pakistan. The dances were delightful, the costumes (mainly of red and yellow for joy, green for spring and harvest) contributed mightily to the effect, and the everchanging groupings onstage added to the interest.

In between dances, the director provided interpretive comments while the dancers changed clothes and there were also black and white clips of dancing at street festivals, all helping to put the staged dances in perspective.

For those wanting to know more about Gujarat and Rajastan, www.wikipedia/wiki/org is a good place to start.

The United Kingdom, this year's invited country, sent RANDOM DANCE which performed the exciting work Ataxia, an exciting dance of extreme movements to purposefully repetitive score, suggested by the choreographer's response to the courage of a woman in his Pilates class.
The idea may seem odd but I can assure you that the hour long dance worked. I only wish that I could go back to see it again. The choreographer, Wayne McGregor took advantage of the indivual styles of the dancers in his company from several ethnic groups now making up Britain and Ms. Carter who designed the lighting also contributed mightily to the evening.