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company called Action Players in Kolkata, he started
training deaf kids. (“It used to be politically correct
to call them hearing-impaired, but we’re back to deaf
now,” he says, as an aside.)
“When I’m teaching a class, the first thing
everybody has to learn is to count simultaneously,”
Deboo says. “Synchronisation is extremely important,
then trust and learning to work with spaces.” His
work with the deaf has expanded to include a school
in Chennai and one in Mumbai. He’s also built a
relationship with the largest American school for the
deaf, and taken “my young ones” on tour there.
He recalls a performance by the deaf
Bharatnatyam dancers of the Chennai school in
1990, to music composed by jazz guitarist Amit Heri.
“Towards the end, I’d turn off the music – and then
the audience would get it. That this is the ‘sound’ that
these kids on stage are dancing to.”
This is just part of how Deboo keeps himself
“constantly challenged”. Right now, he’s working on a
project with Korean and Carnatic musicians, as well as
an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet with a Korean
theatre company, collaborating with Bharatnatyam
dancers from the Chicago-based Natya Dance
Company and “two boys I mentored while working with
the Salaam Baalak Trust”. He insists on “keeping the
technique undiluted” through all this fusion.
We’re meeting in a sliver of time he’s got to spend
in Mumbai, right after he’s returned from Bhutan
and before he gets into a very busy international tour
schedule. To commemorate his 50th anniversary as a
professional dancer, he says the city of Munich is keen
on “paying homage to me.” For this, he’ll present “An
Evening With Astad”, a nostalgia piece he’s developed
with Swedish-Indian choreographer Rani Nair, with
the hypothesis: What does your body remember?
“Sure, I am an Indian dancer, my body is Indian,
I started off with Indian classical technique and
moved on,” Deboo analyses his oeuvre. “But my
contemporariness is Indian in itself, because of its
content: I may not take on the Ramayana or the
Mahabharata, but I’ve created work on the life of a
drug addict, for instance, or exploring the veena as
an accompaniment. There is an Indian flavour to my
movements, and while it is always individualistic, it
has to always be present.
“I’ve really had to cultivate my audience,” he
continues. “They’ve usually been over the age of 40,
erudite, curious individuals. My greatest challenge is
that I’ve to keep on knocking at doors and marketing
myself. But what’s wonderful is that now the younger
generations come for the shows.”
Does the thought of stopping ever cross his mind,
when the likes of prolific British dancer Akram Khan
have announced retirement at 40? “When you watched
me at G5A, did you feel like this body should retire?”
he demands to know. I quickly demur, and he follows
it up with a story about the great Merce Cunningham,
often called the father of modern dance. “When he was
riddled with arthritis, at times we’d watch him go on
stage like this.” He gets up and imitates an old, stiff
body vibrating and stamping on the dance floor.
“It was not a pleasant thing to experience. But then,
when one is used to being up there, one has to be very
wise to know when their body’s giving up.” He pauses.
“I have to always listen to my body.” IMAGE: RITAM BANERJEE
LET’S DO THINGS RIGHT
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