An Evening with Astad
Projection Set Design
An evening with Astad
Concept performer: Rani Nair
Performance: Astad Deboo, Rani Nair
Dramaturg/Historian: Kate Elswit
Light design: Josefin Hinders
Video: Thomas Romlöv
Stenkrossen, Lund, Sweden
Autumn 2017
Dance, storytelling and futureabout astad of deboo.
An Evening with Astad is a biographical dance that retells histories that have not yet been written. The piece focuses on the experimental 1970s and ‘80s solos of Astad Deboo, a pioneer of contemporary Indian dance, whose career spans almost fifty years and five continents.
On stage with Deboo, choreographer Rani Nair takes on the role of archivist and biographer, cataloguing Deboo’s choreography and stories, finding new ways to share those with an audience.
Deboo explains that technology and money meant his earlier work was never recorded, but “now Rani turns the clock back and …it’s amazing to see how much the body remembers.” The relational duet form of An Evening with Astad offers a new point of access to this formidable artist — the who of a life story, rather than the what. What results is not only a biography of Deboo himself, but also a personal, intergenerational chronicle of contemporary Indian dance, one that time-travels both backward and into the future.
There are only very few moving images left from Mr. Deboo’s performances - but a whole lot of photos, news paper clips and other memorabilia from his life. Quite unusual for a pre-mobile phone era artist. A lot of these are spontaneous snapshots from all over the world - almost as if he had a mobile phone before they existed. Since the theme is memory and documentation we decided to work with creating memories in the show. Thus the beginning is recorded live on a mobile with a selfie stick whilst projected to the audience. The same screen was used for projecting a collection of pictures from his life.