Dance Appreciation Workshop

Dance Appreciation Workshop is a series held in both online and offline mode that started with the intention of making the world of dance and movement practice more accessible to audiences – by providing new lenses and vocabulary through which to view the world of dance.

What is it
about ?

Creating communities is integral to Pickle Factory – a community of dance and movement artists in Calcutta and around the world and of dance-curious audiences. This community of people connected by passion or just simple curiosity about movement and dance work is what we aim at nurturing and being home to.

Led by Kathakali Jana – dance critic & writer – this dance appreciation workshop rigorously examines the foundational elements and aesthetic dimensions of dance, contrasting the intricate techniques and cultural histories of Indian classical dances, Western ballet, and Contemporary movement arts while also addressing gender representation. It critically explores contemporary dance, emphasizing its heterogeneous movement techniques, theoretical frameworks, and historical evolution through conflict and reconstruction.

03 – 06 November ‘24 (online)

Guest Speakers
Preethi Athreya
Urmimala Sarkar Munsi

This year’s online workshop delves deep into the world of dance, exploring everything from classical Indian forms to contemporary movement.
From the intricacies of technique to the power of expression, participants will gain a profound understanding of dance as an art form. They are invited to watch, experience and respond to dance, with an open mind and as an active participant. The workshop scrutinizes the interdisciplinary influences on dance, analyzing works like “The Nutcracker” and “Romeo & Juliet,” and interrogates the accessibility and boundary-challenging nature of contemporary dance. It culminates in a critical discussion on reimagining classical texts in both Indian and Western contexts, engaging participants in reflective analysis of their own critical reviews and interpretations.

14 – 19 September ‘21 (online)

Guest Speakers
Diya Naidu
Urmimala Sarkar Munsi

For the third edition, we mixed things up and brought in Prof. Urmimala Sarkar Munsi (Dance Studies & Performance Research Methodology, the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi) and Diya Naidu (Choreographer, Dancer, Performer, Facilitator, Arts and Culture organiser based in Bangalore).

A great takeaway for us this time round, were the fascinating mix of participants that attended the workshop. Apart from the usual suspects – academics, aspiring writers and dancers-performers who were the majority- we also saw fresh faces (from the completely uninitiated to young graphic designers to someone from a traditional Devadasi family in Tamil Nadu!) who approached the world of dance through their individual backgrounds and lenses of aesthetics.

10 – 13 June ‘21 (online)

The workshop journeyed through video clips of seminal dance works from around the world, rich discussions amongst the participants on their thoughts and feelings, ending with a critical review composed by them which factored in all the concepts they were introduced to.

What we achieved in addition to making dance and movement more accessible to new audiences, was creating a new ‘dance-curious’ community, comprising not just dancers but also people uninitiated in the world of movement.

11 -13 September ‘20 (online)

On the weekend of 11 to 13 September, 2020, we organised a Dance Appreciation Workshop, an interactive online workshop where 11 participants were invited to watch, experience and respond to dance in a critical manner.

Our constant endeavour has been about creating enough doors for the dance-curious to walk through and hopefully discover something. Given the constraints, we thought hard about continuing to provide engaging and participatory opportunities to online audiences. The Dance Appreciation Workshop enabled us to give access to more vocabulary and discussion while watching dance. Through this weekend, we attempted to make dance and movement practice more accessible and readable to a general public.

Kathakali Jana is the head of administration and events at a reputed arts organisation and an eminent dance critic. She loves dance and writing. Whether writing articles in The Telegraph or else where, her uncanny knack of capturing the soul of a dance piece in her words means that her reviews are much anticipated by dancers and audiences alike. Her writing makes the abstract accessible, creating an identifiable context for the layperson to read dance easily while simultaneously give the seasoned audience or practitioner much to mull on.

Preethi Athreya trained in classical Indian dance and has 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, with a strong commitment to constantly redefine the Indian body. Preethi has been engaged in creating a personal movement language that reflects her relationship with her context, being at the same time open to new ways in how we may relate to the body. She has choreographed, performed, and produced 13 collaborative works since 2003, the latest being And Indeed There Will Be Time… (2020) and BIRD (2021).

Urmimala Sarkar Munsi is a social anthropologist and a dancer /choreographer and has retired as the Dean and Professor from the School of Arts and Aesthetics, at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She is trained at the Uday Shankar India Culture Centre, Kolkata. Her Recent publications include Alice Boner Across Geographies and Arts (2021), Uday Shankar and his Transcultural Experimentations: Dancing Modernity (2022), Mapping Critical Dance Studies in India (2024) and Becoming the Body (co-edited with Aishika Chakraborty, 2024). Her recent research is on dance and the body with special reference to interdisciplinary studies on gender, sexuality, caste, and class hierarchies. Her specialization is in post-graduate research methodology involving ethnography, performance research, and dance studies.

Diya Naidu is a choreographer, dancer, performer, facilitator, arts and culture organiser. She is the founder of Citizens of Stage Co Lab and was the head of Dance Programming at Shoonya Centre for Art & Somatic Practices, Bengaluru. As a choreographer, her work has traversed into the area of gender and feminism – violence against women, the role of caste and class in lack of safety for women and the somatic implications of patriarchal penetration. While she makes work for large stages, currently she works largely in the immersive and intimate performance space.