Traces of/on the Body

Von Miriam Stuefer

From the moment the audience sets foot into the theatre, they’re immediately transported to a summer night at the river. A soundscape of crickets and the flow of water create a calming transition from the noisy techno parade in the streets of Salzburg outside the Toihaus theatre one evening in June. In the following hour the choreographer and dancer Nayana Keshava Bhat and theatre director Sankar Venkateswaran invite the audience into a conversation about the traces a space leaves on us.

“Heartlands” was created as the central piece of Influx’s 10-year anniversary. Influx is an open network of interdisciplinary and intercultural artists. More than two hundred artists from all over the world have collaborated within the network. 

Candles, a Kuthu vilakku (a traditional South Indian brass or bronze oil lamp), tea, and the intimate setting create a ritual-like gathering of people. Getting to know each other becomes a performance in its repetitive nature. Using gestures from Bharatanatyam and Kutiyattam, two South Indian theatre and performance practices with a rich, long cultural tradition, the two performers converse. Taking these gestures out of their usual context makes them appear just as lost as the two Indian performers in the city of Salzburg. Even though they are from different cultures within India they find common ground so far from home. The signs, as echoes from home, help them navigate Salzburg.

During the encounter they do not look at each other, but at the audience. As if they were not quite talking to each other but to the audience as a silent participant. The silence of the participants is broken by a child tentatively entering the stage, without disturbing the performance. This encounter and the lightly lit auditorium makes the connection more intimate, as if we were all sitting around a campfire.

Cultural exchange, cultural similarities

The embodied knowledge of South India clashes on Austria, the setting of the performance and where most of the people in the audience come from. Cultural exchange, but also cultural similarities, emerge: The gestures are subtitled in English, and the mountains of Salzburg remind Sankar Venkateswaran of home. The underlying music is improvised on the viola da gamba and kalimba by jazz musician Chris Dahlgren, introducing yet another layer of cultural reference. Through questions the audience reflects on their own histories and traces.

As the conversation unfolds, we’re being taken along mountain paths and get to see coconuts fall from their trees on the beaches of India. The atmosphere warms up as the performers get to know each another and aren’t so alone anymore in the foreign surroundings. Histories are not only outside of us, they leave their traces on us. The individual is thus shaped through everything one loves: the smell of rain, cardamom, and the places one moves through and that move through one.

Near the end the audience is invited to take some chalk or salt and draw on the floor. Marks of flowers, rivers and abstract symbols emerge, while others stay seated and watch the process. The doors at the back of the stage are opened so the audience can traverse the newly created landscape into the foyer. People linger in conversation and a cup of chai while constantly moving back to the stage. Watching as new marks appear or how one of the audience members dances amidst the chalk and sand.

The history of spaces leaves its traces. Toihaus, standing on a place that has also been a courtyard, factory and abandoned landscape, acquires new meanings through every performance shown there. It becomes a beach, a space suffused with red, a summer evening, and a mountain path. And as we leave our own traces, the room also leaves traces on us while we slowly file into the foyer for a cup of tea.

Dieser Text entstand im Rahmen einer Kooperation von tanznetz mit Studierenden der Paris Lodron Universität in Salzburg unter der Leitung von Dr. Miriam Althammer und der Choreographic Platform Austria.