A show that serves a visual feast and food for thought

Experience "Yela Oota" by Vishwakiran Nambi Dance Company at RVF, a captivating blend of folk and contemporary dance exploring food insecurity.

Even as it forged connections with the heartbeat of the agrarian lifecycle, “Yele Oota”, a production of Bengaluru-based Vishwakiran Nambi Dance Company, trained the spotlight on food insecurity and the access gap in basic nutrition, in a show that blended folk rhythms and contemporary dance movements at the 11th Remembering Veenapani Festival (RVF), hosted by Adishakti

“Yela Oota”, (which in Kannada stands for grand meal served on a plantain leaf), is both a feast for the eyes and food for thought, as it explores humanity’s primal relationship with food through a choreographic juxtaposition of the polarities of affluence and abundance (perhaps even wastage) on the one side and hunger and deprivation on the other.

The seven-piece ensemble of men and women artistes in traditional agrarian attire, alternate between movements of a balletic grace and bursts of raw energy; a syncretic amalgam of synchronous dance moves, rolls and slides across the stage floor.

The action progresses against the backdrop of Gopu Krishnan’s medley musical arrangement — folk melody, heavy bass guitar riffs, percussion, even a couple of sloka utterances centred on the philosophical tradition of regarding food as the ultimate truth.

The hybrid of styles is hardly surprising given that the training background of the artistes — Shrijani Rao, Kalpana Devaprasad, Thejas Kumar, Priyanka Saxena, Junafar and Dinesh Kumar — are as varied as the classical, contemporary and the aerialist genres.

As the troupe founder-choreographer Vishwakiran Nambi would say later, the project was originally inspired by the idea of a community feast that everyone partakes in together irrespective of caste or creed. The project, initiated in 2019 was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the experiences of that difficult period also set off a change in course, thematically speaking, he adds.

“What we noticed during the pandemic was the conspicuous discrepancy in the distribution of food...such inequality of access to a basic need”.