Avantika Bahl On PRIME Positioning Ageing Bodies As Living Archives, Working With Performers Over 60- EXCL

Avantika Bahl interview: Her Instagram describes her as a 'Dance Maker, Performer and Educator'. When I got to know about her new initiative PRIME, I was keen to understand how she would pull things off and create magic on the floor. From being India's first full-fledged contemporary dance production featuring senior dancers to creating inclusive performances, Avantika Bahl has done it all with PRIME.

At Filmibeat, we love interacting with talented artists who dared to go beyond the clouds. From working with performers above 60 years to sharing the inspiration behind creating a show centred around ageing bodies, Avantika spilled the beans in an exclusive interview with Filmibeat Chief Copy Editor Abhishek Ranjit.

Here are excerpts from the interviews.

1. Avantika, PRIME is being hailed as India's first full-length contemporary dance production featuring senior performers. What was the spark or inspiration that led you to create a show centred on ageing bodies?

For me there wasn't really a spark but I think it was my own relationship with my changing body after two pregnancies in quick succession and as a dancer I realized that my body had transformed and had morphed and I was and I had to sort of renegotiate and recalibrate what this new body and what this new physicality meant for me and in the process it got me thinking about aging and it got me thinking about time, it got me thinking about what happens as dancers start aging and what how is it that they negotiate with the form and what happens when they're at the crossroads of knowledge and ability. From that point on this is the first time I got pregnant was nearly seven years ago. I think these questions really lingered in my mind till I was actually till I felt ready to at least start researching and meeting dancers above age of 60 which is what I did last year and I and I realized that their journeys were very very vastly different from mine in terms of the way that they approached dance and in the way that they continued their relationship with dance.

2. The production redefines the idea of being "in one's prime." How do you personally interpret this phrase, and how did it shape the narrative and movement vocabulary of the show?

Being in one's prime is really, to me, is the notion of being able to live your life, live a full life, live a life of joy and live a life that is wholesome. And I've realized working with a cast that is all above the age of 60 and the way that they approach their life and the way that they think about just life and the way that they think about everyday living and the way that they celebrate every single day. For me, I think that that's what makes them in their prime because their worries are not the way that our generation would think about life.

3. Working with performers above 60 must have opened a new dimension in choreography. What kind of stories, memories, or lived experiences did they bring into the rehearsal room that enriched the process?

So the rehearsal process has been extremely rich and extremely fulfilling for me because each of the performers and each of you know the dancers they came in with such rich personal histories and stories and narratives and I was very very keen that you know their own relationship with dance and form could be highlighted in the best possible way. So, for me I really sort of wanted to make sure that we find ways to integrate their own experiences, nostalgia, resilience, joy, sorrows, grief and interweave all of that into the larger narrative of the performance.

4. Dance is often associated with youth and agility. What challenges creative, physical, or even societal, did you face while working with older bodies, and how did you overcome them?

So the reason now that I feel that dance is associated with youth and agility is simply because dance seems to now have an expiry date which in my opinion it shouldn't. I think it makes the notion of arts more limiting and also it seems that we are as a society really trying to kind of almost categorize and generalize what dancers should look like and how they should look and in other aspects as well. So in that sense actually it was very very precious and liberating to be able to work with you know different body types, different ages, different experiences and sort of be in the room together to develop a work.

Some of the challenges I think was more vocabulary and language because each of them came from a very different form and style and for us to reach an equitable level and equitable ground where they were able to understand the abstraction of contemporary dance and also dive deeper into some of the just some of the I guess movements and compositions that I wished to you know wish to see or wish them to kind of create. Some of them were limited a little bit in their form but over time the idea of actually using their knowledge of and their understanding of a physical vocabulary over time I personally felt that we were all able to reach a common language and that was actually very fulfilling.

5. PRIME positions ageing bodies as "living archives." Could you share a moment during the making of the production when this idea came alive most vividly for you?

I think there wasn't really a particular moment where I realised that they're living archives but I sort of, I think that the lives that my performers have lived versus just the lives that my generation has seen and what we have been exposed to is so vastly different and I realised that I was actually standing on their shoulders, you know the generation above, like older than me, I was standing on their shoulders and it's something that I wasn't even aware of the challenges, the compromises, the negotiations you know, the adjustments that the older generation has had to make to pursue even their love for dance or to just go back to dancing are so vastly different from what my generation faces and things that I take for granted that I know that they've had to really, really fight for and that gave me truly a sense of, you know, how how each of them, you know, their love for dance truly comes also from a sense of longing because they've also had to wait to be able to restart dancing or they've also, or for some of them, they discovered dance much later and some of them stopped dancing and they're back to it so this sort of deep passion and love for dance is something that I will always carry with me, thanks to them

6. Beyond the stage, what conversations or shifts do you hope PRIME sparks in the way society perceives ageing, artistry, and the value of intergenerational storytelling?

I'm hoping that PRIME is really able to sort of open up a discourse around just aging and perceptions of aging in a way that is actually healthy and inclusive because the opportunity that I have had to be able to really learn from you know the older generation in a very very I guess dynamic and also in a very in a safe space and also in a way where there is mutual respect and I think that that has been really special because there is space for each of us to be able to share what we you know where we come from and because of that my fondness for spending time with the elderly has gone up even more and I think that I really hope that people are able to reassess what they think of as mainstream and are able to challenge what mainstream is and also perhaps look at age as something that is a lived experience and not something that has a cut-off limit beyond which capabilities and abilities reduce.