The Prague Post
October 13th, 2008
Endowment Fund     Business Listings ONLINE      Reservations      Classifieds    Subscriptions
Hotel Prague Centre
Prague Real Estate

Home » Archives » Tempo

The iconoclast

Astad Deboo broke Indian stereotypes by creating a unique dance vocabulary

By Kamal Sunavala
For The Prague Post
March 14th, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Deboo, left and top center, has incorporated a unique style of Indian martial arts into his choreography.
India is known as the country that exports yoga and software experts. Contemporary dance is usually not in the mix. But one of the world’s most innovative modern dancers hails from India, and he’s bringing his troupe to Prague for a performance unlike any seen on the city’s stages.
Astad Deboo, award-winning dancer and choreographer par excellence, is best described as a fluid man. Having recently been bestowed with the Padma Shri, India’s civilian version of the French Legion d’honneur, he takes some pride in what his art has done for his country’s prestige.
Astad Deboo

When: Thursday, March, 15 at 7
Where: Estates Theater
Tickets: At press time, the only seats available were obstructed views for 50–150 Kč

“This proves that the world is interested in the unusual things that Indians can successfully do,” he says, adding that it’s not a moment too soon.
With training that extends from Martha Graham to the Murray Lewis Dance Company to the larger-than-life Kathakali (dance-drama from south India) movements, Deboo draws inspiration from a global variety of techniques, trend-blazing performances and energy levels while creating what he calls “my own vocabulary.”
For a program aptly titled “Celebration,” Deboo has choreographed 75 minutes of soul-stirring modern dance powerfully interwoven with an ancient northeast Indian fighting technique called Thang-ta. Literally translating as “sword-spear,” this 17th-century Manipuri martial art is quite distinct from most well-known martial arts techniques. Using it as a basis for his choreography, Deboo has attempted to “dissolve modern dance movements into their form to create a new language.”

It’s quite a feat to put ancient tribal arts in a modern context, Deboo notes, mostly because Indian tribes are often suspicious about letting outsiders in on their rituals and performances for fear their original styles will be misused.

Deboo has personal knowledge of what fear and mistrust can do to an original art form. India, a land of pure and traditional dance forms such as Kathak and Bharatnatyam, along with a commercial Bollywood-style gyrating form of dance, has hardly been welcoming to modern dance, a genre that was thought to have little commercial value. Deboo did not falter or change his course of action, though. And he believes his country is finally coming of age, accepting that the norm can exist in harmony with the unusual.
“In the old days, it was almost impossible to garner finance for my art,” he says. “Nowadays, while it is still a struggle to get the same kind of financial attention as commercial dance and theater, it is getting so much better and easier.”
Asked if his entry into the Western world was easier, he says that it was — with  caveats. “The West is equally guilty of pigeonholing India into conventional dance forms,” Deboo explains, recounting several occasions when his talents were undervalued simply because Indians had no reputation or achievements on the modern dance circuit. Being Indian often meant he had to prove he was good enough to rub shoulders with dancing royalty.
His hard-won struggle gave him some fond memories, though. One of the highlights of his career, he says, came in 1986, when he was commissioned by Pierre Cardin to choreograph a work for the Bolshoi Ballet.
For a man to undertake a journey that flouts not only convention but also international prejudice, and to succeed at the level Deboo has, is a remarkable achievement. Some influences on his choreography are clear: Martha Graham, the London School of Contemporary Dance and several prominent Indian gurus such as Prahlad Das and Uttara Asha. Essentially, Deboo has absorbed what works for him and filled in the rest with his own signature style.
From hitchhiking across the world to performing for presidents, royalty and disabled children, Deboo has managed to break out of the mold and introduce audiences worldwide to the fact that not only can a man dance on his own, but can look like poetry wafting on the air. Asked if his work carries a message, he is astonishingly practical. “Art for art’s sake,” he declares. “I don’t claim to have any profound message through my work.”
When asked about his work with deaf children in India, he breaks into a broad smile. “I have danced in 60 countries across the world, but few things give me as much satisfaction as working with my deaf kids,” he says. Deboo continues to work on a regular basis with deaf children in Chennai and Calcutta in India, where he teaches them to dance based on a counting rhythm.
What really separates Deboo from other international contemporary dancers are his extreme facial expressions. Drawing inspiration from Kathakali, he not only contorts his body into seemingly impossible positions but also his face into the canopy of an entire tale. Improvisation is an added vocabulary, especially when performing with the deaf children. 
Deboo’s March 15 performance at the Estates Theater will be followed by a short series of solo performances and workshops in April in Prague and Brno, at the invitation of the Duncan Centre Conservatory. Apparently, the time has finally come for Deboo to feel free to create without worrying about production opportunities.
“I have been dancing for 28 years,” he says. “And it seems as if now the light is shining in the shadowed corners of India.”

Kamal Sunavala can be reached at tempo@praguepost.com


Other articles in Tempo (14/03/2007):

Browse the Current Issue

If you enjoyed this article, why don't you subscribe to the print version!
We accept secure online transactions provided by PayPal and Moneybookers

Be the first to add a comment!


Full Name: *
City: *
E-mail: **
This comment can be published in the print version of The Prague Post
Enter the text on the right:
 visual captcha
Comment: *
* Required field. In order to be approved for display, comments must have a first and last name and a city.
** E-mails are required and will only be used for internal purposes.

Most visited in Business Listings

Hotel booking
The Prague Post Online contains a selection of articles that have been printed in
The Prague Post, a weekly newspaper published in the Czech Republic.
To subscribe to the print paper, click here.
Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited.