Astad Deboo : Interpreting Tagore

by Tathagata Mitra · Published February 21, 2014 · Updated June 4, 2014

Astad Deboo, with the team of Salaam Baalak Trust presented Interpreting Tagore on 20 February. It was performed to a packed Sri Aurobindo Auditorium at Auroville, Tamilnadu. The Inquirer team had reported on Breaking Boundaries, their performance in Pondicherry in 2011. We were back again for a meditative evening with Astad Deboo who is an internationally celebrated dancer and choreographer.

Astad Deboo and Radhika Khanna, Editor, The Inquirer, with Aurovillians

Astad Deboo has put his training in Indian classical dance forms of Kathak as well as Kathakali to create a dance form that is unique to him. He is a pioneer of modern dance in India.

In this performance Astad Deboo worked with the young boys of the Salaam Baalak Trust. It included four pieces, Surrender, Your Grace, Walking Tall, and Awakening. Your Grace used three dancing ten-foot figures of the goddess Devi, made by Anil, one of the performing artists along with Muhammad Shameem. In Walking Tall, based on Rabindranath Tagore’s popular song Ekla Cholo Re, Deboo transported Tagore’s call for

Astad Deboo: The Whirling Dervish

hope in the setting of boardroom meetings between dancers and corporate executives. The high point of the 80 minute performance, Awakening, Deboo’s solo piece, ended with the whirling dance or Sufi whirling that is associated with Dervishes.Interpreting Tagore had renditions by Japanese composer Yoichiro Yoshikawa, Frederico Senesi, Alio Die, Bill Laswell, Kodo Drummers, Mari Boine, Jan Garbarek and Liro Rantala.