Time to ‘Mix The Body’

There’s a dancer inside all of us, it just needs the right tunes to free the right moves! That’s precisely what British Council attempted in association with the famous contemporary dance artists from Studio Wayne Mc Gregor, UK and Attakkalari Dance Company, India.

One of its kind digital dance experience, Mix The Body, was launched in India on October 16, 2017 as a part of UK/India 2017 initiative to celebrate a major bilateral year of cultural exchange.

Alan Gemmell launching Mix The Body

Introduced by Alan Gemmell OBE, the Director of the British Council in India, Mix The Body is an interactive platform that offers users an understanding of contemporary dance.

Wondering how?
Herein, people can create their own dance piece online by connecting with the physical movement of the dancers on the platform.
Just pick your dancers, create gestures on the device screen, add musical score to it, and you are done. You can learn the contemporary dance by going through the choreographic journey of professional dancers and see the result of that journey as a final shareable video.

Being a part of the event, and witnessing those mesmerising dance moves was a beautiful experience. It has empowered users to choreograph a unique dance – on their phones – using Wayne’s dance language and dancers from Attakkalari and Wayne’s company.

True to their endeavour, Mix The Body promotes curiosity, makes people more reflective, thereby celebrating diversity in a distinct musical dance way.

Experiencing the interactive platform

Know more about it here.

Saptan Stories – The art of storytelling

Don’t you think, digital media has opened doors for us to reach out to the masses? Certainly, yes is for an answer! And when art shakes hands with digital media, surrealism happens.

That was the beauty of Saptan Stories! A creative collaboration between Aardman & British Council as a part of UK/India 2017; a year-long celebration of modern-day India and its 70-year relationship with the UK, aimed at inspiring creative writing, thinking and art. It brought together 7 standout artists from India and UK who interpret Saptan Stories in their own varied styles. The artists are Adrita Das, Gavin Strange, Gemma Correll, Janine Shroff, Mr Mead, Priyesh Trivedi, and Saloni Sinha.

I was invited to the Exclusive unveiling of art pieces for the 5^th week by British Council, India, where writers and bloggers from various genres came together to put across their version of an art.

The week 5 of the Saptan Stories had those artists churning their brains on “I was falling through what seemed like a long tunnel, blinded by lights. I somehow landed on my two feet and found myself in a large hall. Walls covered in photographs. Photographs of my entire life.”

Beautifully woven stories, free-flowing on a canvas, captivating enough to leave you pondering, only to form a new story of your own. Isn’t that what art is all about – each one’s interpretation as beautiful as the piece – rattled brains, adding on to the analogy of stories!

Discussions with the artists, the bloggers, about the role digitisation has played in our lives was also taken up. The bustling lives hardly allows us an artist to reach the masses, but showcasing their creativity over the web opens up a whole new horizon. More so, because it gives an artist a platform to connect with other artists.

All in all, it was a fun-filled event and being a part of it was enthralling. The arts were amazing, and so were the artists. In its one of its kind endeavour, Saptan Stories introduced me to the finesse of art, or should I say, the digital art, leaving me wanting for more.

You can view the stories and art pieces of all the 5 weeks here.