City Maps was an elegant and artistic display of athleticism
by dancers skilled in the art of dictating movements to their bodies
with absolute control. The dance tries to capture the spirit of
modern life and the journeys of a city, with Italo Calvino’s
Invisible Cities as inspiration. This multimedia production
by the Imalta Dance Company, based in London, was part of
the ongoing German Festival in India.
Bringing
an experience of urban life in a mixture of Indian and European
contexts, the dance succeeds in capturing the emotions of rapid
unification of cultures and the subsequent shifting and disappearance
of boundaries. Somehow the dancers reflected the very essence of
city living, with its constant developments, which unsettle its
inhabitants every now and then.
This contemporary dance show had an international cast, which included
Jayachandran Palazhy, the artistic director and choreographer
for this show. He is the artistic director of Attakalari Centre
for Performing Arts, based in Kochi. Other cast members were
Dil Sagar, an accomplished Kalaripayattu master, Saju
Hari, Nakula Somana and Esther Baron. The music was scored
by award winning composer Shrikanth Shriram, who composed
this piece to accentuate the mood of the dance. Mostly about techno
sounds, the music tended towards reproducing the cacophonous sounds
of a technology-driven city. The video projection of random images
of concrete structures and barren land, constantly on the background,
portrayed a somewhat dark, cynical outlook of the future. Allan
Forrester Parker did the video production and photography. The
images for the video were shot in various cities like Doha, Qatar,
Chennai, Delhi, London and Trivandrum.
In the end, City Maps lived up to the promise of being “a feast
for the senses”
Bringing
an experience of urban life in a mixture of Indian and European
contexts, the dance succeeds in capturing the emotions of rapid
unification of cultures and the subsequent shifting and disappearance
of boundaries. Somehow the dancers reflected the very essence of
city living, with its constant developments, which unsettle its
inhabitants every now and then. 
