It’s all about dance, theatre and six love stories
dubai — There’s more to a love story than what meets the eye. From the ecstatic high that two college-going best friends experience when they realise that they’ve fallen madly in love with each other; or when the lives of a man and woman from different cultural backgrounds come clashing together in what society calls ‘forbidden love’; lovers’ emotions can seldom be justified or depicted in pictures, words, and cinema.
However, for an ensemble of very passionate dancers in Dubai, love is best depicted through the dance-theatre medium.
Dubai-based creative dance group Avega Dance Creation define themselves as a bunch of ‘dancecrazy group that lives passion in movement.’ But their fluid dance routines and flawless choreography proves that there is nothing arbitrary in the message that Avega would like to convey through dance. “Avega is the Sanskrit term for ‘passion’… And in this particular production, we are trying to depict six, unconnected love stories through dance,” said creative director of Avega Shruthi Rameshan.
The group aims to break barriers created by mainstream dance performances that are done for the sake of ‘entertainment’. For Rameshan and her team of dancers, dance is art. The dance group, which was formed in January 2015, is Rameshan’s life-long dream. After testing the waters with a few invite-only shows, Rameshan and her team decided to take their concept to the big stage with ‘Raas’. Venue: Centrepoint Theatre, Ductac, Mall of Emirates Date: March 30 & 31 Doors Open: 7.30pm Show Starts: 8.30pm Tickets: Dh150, Dh100
The show is set to debut at the Centrepoint Theatre, Ductac at the Mall of the Emirates on March 30 at 7.30pm. The show will reprise for a second time on March 31 as well. Fourteen talented dancers living in Dubai will perform the show. “We strongly believe in encouraging local talent… All the dancers have fulltime jobs and they have taken time off from their schedules to practise and hone their skills to the perfection that it is today,” said creative director and choreographer Hitesh Rajani.
‘Raas’ is an intense dance theatre exploration of six contemporary love stories. Rajani is a seasoned dancer from India and has worked with several professional dancers and reality shows in India. Unlike Rameshan who believes she was born to dance, Rajani found dance by chance after a school show eight years ago.
“The choreography basically pays emphasis to modern contemporary and Indian classical dance forms will find heavy influences from the Indian dance form Kathak in the production as well,” added Rajani.
The production has paid emphasis on the expressions used by the dancers to convey the sometimes happy and sometimes-painful love stories.
Concept and story
The six stories explore love through different ages and circumstances. “The one and a half hour show breaks the six stories in two parts… We’ve explored very simple and extremely complex love stories,” said Rameshan. The production dwells on teenage, unrequited, forbidden love and even explores the pain heartbreak causes. “For example, one of the stories is about how a woman with a physical disability gets jilted by her fiancé and her journey after the heartbreak,” added Rameshan.
“The ideas for the love stories were born from very real-life experiences that almost everyone would’ve experienced at some point of their life or the other,” said Rameshan. She added: “Through Raas we want to create a mirror for the audience because everyone of us have experienced love at some point in our life or the other… In that sense, these six stories are very personal to each one of us,” she explained.
Watch them perform at:
Introducing dance theatre
Except for Rameshan and Rajani, all the other dancers in the group have full-time jobs who have taken time off their schedules to be part of the show. Each one of the dancers stated that they want to pursue dance as a full-time job, however, given the social and economic commitments, dancing as a full time career is not yet a feasible option to the dancers in Dubai. According to many of the dancers, there is a real hope for dance theatre in Dubai.
Ancy Alexander, one of the dancers, said: “There is a real hunger for dance theatre culture in Dubai and this particular art form is slowly maturing as well.”
One of the senior dancer per- formers at the show Shereen Saif, who is also a professional Mohiniyattam (a classical dance form of Kerala) dancer, said: “Parents who want their children to pursue dance said that they must stop looking at dance as something that gives them instant gratification. Dance is an art that must be nurtured over the years… Performers must be taught to connect with the audiences.”
Chipping into the conversation, Vrinda Bandula, a graphic designer and Kathak dancer, said: “Artistic dance is definitely growing and gaining fast popularity in Dubai and there is scope for dancers to professionally pursue the art, instead of something that they can ‘do on the side’.”