Dedicated to Asian dance and music. Keeping the arts communities informed, connected and energised. Highlighting hot spots of creativity and cutting-edge practise, making these ancient art forms ever relevant and refreshed.
The first time I saw the BBB perform was last year at the Guildford International Music Festival, and I’d been keeping my eyes and ears peeled for their next (London-based) gig ever since. These guys are great, if you haven’t seen them perform before then you should. Sold as “Bollywood meets Brass meets Bhangra”, they do exactly what it says on the tin plus much much more.
London audiences will be treated to a real gem of a performance this weekend as Aakash Odedra takes to the stage at The Place on Friday 24 and Saturday 25 February. Pulse caught up with Odedra ahead of the show to probe him on his kathak journey thus far.
Odedra, who spent most of last year in the studio working with three big names on the international contemporary dance scene - namely Russel Maliphant, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Akram Khan, compares his experience of working with choreographers from different dance worlds. “In kathak there’s a formality and if you don’t learn the formality then you don’t learn the art form.”, he begins. “There’s that level of respect, the behaviour and mannerisms in the class but with the choreographers it’s completely different.
Mohiniattam dancer, Miti Desai, is set to perform in The Good Fashion Show, later this week. Pulse caught up with Miti ahead of her performance to get the lowdown on all things dance and design. Interview conducted and edited by Lucinda Al-Zoghbi.
LA: How long have you been dancing Mohiniattam and where and with whom did you begin your training?
The stage is deserted except for a few discarded instruments which mysteriously fade into the background. A film (aren’t we here to see a music concert?), that’s set on board a flight bound for London Gatwick airport, appears on a projected screen and is over-layed with speech spoken by an Indian man. We, or rather I, later discover that the man is, or rather was, Rabindranath Tagore, the acclaimed Bengali poet.
He slipped off the radar for a while but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been hard at work. Pulse caught up with Mavin Khoo, the acclaimed Malaysian-born dancer of bharatanatyam, contemporary and ballet to hear how his dance career is flourishing across the world.
Mavin Khoo is a busy man. Like any successful dance artist, he has a back-to-back schedule that includes training, rehearsals, performances and numerous meetings. But where Khoo is different from his contemporaries is his geographic reach. Khoo stretches himself between his home in Malta, his native Malaysia, India, London and wherever his tour takes him (usually Europe and Asia). Khoo admits “...my life is pretty hectic at the moment because my work branches out into so many different areas.” Amongst these: premiere for his own version of Swan Lake, cr
