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And Indeed There Will Be Time
A conversation between a poet and a dancer
Speakers
Poet, writer and critic Arundhati Subramaniam and performer, choreographer and facilitator, Preethi Athreya engage in a conversation about what drives them to undertake their creative processes and how they each negotiate the role of art within society, especially given the present circumstances of the pandemic.
Speakers
Arundhathi Subramaniam
Described as ‘one of the finest poets writing in India today’ (The Hindu, 2010) Arundhathi Subramaniam is the award-winning author of twelve books of poetry and prose. Widely translated and anthologised, her most recent volume of poems is Love Without a Story. Her previous book, When God is a Traveller was the Season Choice of the Poetry Book Society, shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize.
Arundhathi is the recipient of various awards and fellowships, including the inaugural Khushwant Singh Prize, the Raza Award for Poetry, the Zee Women’s Award for Literature, the International Piero Bigongiari Prize in Italy, the Zee Indian Women Award for Literature, the Mystic Kalinga award, among others. She has written extensively on culture and spirituality, and has worked over the years as poetry editor, cultural curator and critic.
As prose writer, her books include the bestselling biography of a contemporary mystic, Sadhguru: More Than a Life and most recently, Adiyogi: The Source of Yoga. As editor, her most recent book is the Penguin anthology of sacred poetry, Eating God.
Preethi Athreya
A Chennai-based contemporary dancer, Preethi Athreya (1976) trained in Bharatanatyam and later went on to do a postgraduate degree in Dance Studies (Laban Centre, London, 2001). Keenly conscious of her need to be defined not as the exotic other, she chose to continue her journey in her native Chennai. Between 1999 and 2011, she worked with Padmini Chettur from where she inherited the evolving legacy of Chandralekha and a strong commitment to constantly redefine the Indian body.
Working within the Indian contemporary dance scene as a performer, choreographer and facilitator, Preethi belongs to a league of dance-makers in India today who use dance as an agent of change. Her initial training in Bharatanatyam and her subsequent training to unlearn the strictures that this classical form placed on the body can be traced across many of her works. Her art is process-driven in a manner that makes it evident within the structure of the works she creates. This also leads to a demystification of the choreographic work – something that Preethi consciously aims for. Her recent ensemble work, The Jumping Project (2015) reflects an endeavour to find an honest body, possibly unbeautiful, but free of artifice. The artist has been engaged in creating a personal movement language that reflects her relationship with her context. She regards her own oeuvre as ‘an attempt to reclaim the body from numerous kinds of anaesthetisation that it is constantly subjected to.’
Her creations are Kamakshi (2003) Inhabit (2006), Porcelain (2007) Pillar to Post (2007), Sweet Sorrow (2010), Light Doesn’t Have Arms To carry Us (2013), Anki Bunki Kata (2013), Across, Not Over (2014), Conditions of Carriage: The Jumping Project(2015), The Lost Wax Project (2018).
Preethi is the founder of CHARCOAL – a platform for artistic collaboration as well as one of the co-founders of Basement 21, a practice-based performance collective in Chennai.
