New Moves: Short Digital Dance Works
Commissioned Choreographer
Vasantham
by Ashvini Sundaram
Watch Vasantham exclusively at
Program A - March 23rd 2022 - 8:00 pm ET ( 5:00pm PT | 7:00pm CT | 9:00pm AT )
Photo of Ashvini Sundaram by Chris Randle
About
Vasantham
Through this work, I investigate my current relationship with Varnam, a specialized repertory item in Bharatanatyam dance. The Varnam, embodied by thousands of women over two centuries, is about unrequited love. It is about unfulfilled expectations, physical and emotional depletion, and spiritual reveal. Here, in Canada, as a Tamil woman, I confront what practicing the Varnam means to me in a space that nurtures my many layers of longing and exhaustion. Vasantham, the title of the film, is a Tamil word describing the season of spring.
Film Still from Vasantham Choreographed and Performed by Ashvini Sundaram, Directed and Edited by Allison Hrabluik
A Word
From the Dramaturg
"Working with Ashvini is a serendipitous journey into her world and her Bharatanatyam practice. I experience a meeting of our minds within the explicit relevance of image and exposure of feeling. What I recall from our first and continuing conversations, is that we are viscerally connected and driven. Her desire to animate the unraveling of self, skin and sweat, are part of both our vocabularies. Ashvini’s generous and gentle, beautiful and intelligent approach to art and communicating, is fascinating. I am thrilled to be serving her art making, as she needs, as her dramaturg."
- Karen Kaeja
The New Moves program is made possible with the generous support of TD Bank Group
