Anishaa Tavag

This Foundation Project implemented by IFA under Explorations will be a collaboration between four contemporary dancers, rethinking and re-embodying ideas of community and co-work through a series of weekly or bi-weekly shared journeys. Anishaa Tavag is the Coordinator for this project.

Anishaa Tavag is a dancer, editor, writer, and a teacher trainee of the Alexander Technique based in Bangalore. She holds an MA in Arts and Aesthetics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and was a resident at the Gati Summer Dance Residency in 2016. Anishaa recently participated in the Certificate Programme for Critical Practice in Contemporary Performance, offered by Dance Nucleus, Singapore. Given her experience she is best placed to be the Coordinator of this Foundation Project of IFA. In this project, Anishaa will collaborate with Bangalore based contemporary dancers Ainesh Madan, Dayita Nereyeth and Joshua Sailo.

In this project titled Extensive Jams, these four contemporary dancers who are teacher trainees in the Alexander Technique, will examine ways to bring together their solo investigations into a sustainable long term collective practice, rather than a one-time, explosive, cost-ineffective ‘intensive’. They feel that these contemporary dance ‘intensives’ are high on carbon foot-print due to the intercontinental travels by the practitioners as the form is embodied in the artist’s body. This impulse to move beyond the ‘intensives’ towards sustainable long-duration collective journeys, was also motivated by the time of isolation during the Covid-19 lockdowns. 

During the Covid-19 lockdowns, the inaccessibility of in-person classes, rehearsals and performances, instigated the contemporary dance practitioners to centre their practices on process, observation and growth instead of productions. This project will be an opportunity for Anishaa and the collaborators to re-examine the structure of the dance class, removing attention away from the ‘climactic’ moments of technical virtuosity. This will bring attention to other facets of the practice, including the aliveness of the self, the conditions created by interpersonal interactions, and the stimulus from activities not traditional to the dance space, such as games, drawing, engaging with physical objects, and other group-led activities. The learnings from the processes will be marked in a collective journal, which may be in physical, digital or hybrid form. The process will be enriched with invited audiences in open studios that enable improvs and interactive exercises.

The outcome of the project will be the process documentation and a collective journal in a physical, digital or hybrid form. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be this process documentation, including those of the interactive open studio improvs and a collective journal in physical, digital or hybrid forms, including photographs, drawings, texts and videos. Project funds will pay for professional fees, space hire, honorarium, equipment hire and online subscriptions.

This project suitably addresses the framework of IFA’s Arts Practice programme in the manner in which it attempts to highlight process over production in contemporary dance, exploring the pedagogy and practice of the form as non-linear and multi-directional.

IFA will ensure that the implementation of this project happens in a timely manner and funds expended are accounted for. IFA will also review the progress of the project at midterm and document it through an Implementation Memorandum. After the project is finished and all deliverables are submitted, IFA will put together a Final Evaluation to share with Trustees. 

This project is made possible with support from Sony Pictures Entertainment Fund.