NRI girl perform hybrid dance of Kuchipudi
and Spanish dance Flamenco.
Oct. 25, 2005
Rajesh Chopra
NRI, (non resident Indian) SIRI SONTY'S
parents immigrated from Hyderabad. She is working
towards an MD and a Ph.D at the Northwestern University.In
1998, Sonty got interested in flamenco when she visited
Spain.
She blended Indian classical dance and Spanish dance
form because these dance looks same. Sonty' email
impressed to Wendy Clinard, the Chicago´s best-known
Director of Clinard Dance Theater
What do you get when you combine Flamenco
and Classical Indian dance with music by a famous
Flamenco ensemble, and unique visual art? Years of
work, study, travel, collaboration, observation, and
expression that culminate in the premiere of this
groundbreaking hybrid of personal cultures. Wendy
Clinard partners with Siri Sonty to present a
new work which transcends the traditions of Flamenco
and Indian music and dance, incorporates moving visual
art, and features a 10-piece ensemble providing live
music with guest artists from India and the Americas.

- Sonty is a Kuchipudi
and Bharatanatyam Classical Indian dancer who has
given over 300 performances, including four nationwide
performance tours in the U.S. and in India, has
performed for academic, cultural, and religious
organizations for over 20 years, the 1994 Parliament
of World Religions among them, and has had the honor
of performing for the Dalai Lama of Tibet and Sri
Chinmoy of India. She is currently an MD-PhD student
at Northwestern University Medical School.
- Wendy
Clinard One of Chicago´s
best-known and respected contemporary Flamenco performers,
and Artistic Director of Clinard Dance Theater,
Wendy Clinard has over a decade of study and performance
as a Flamenco dancer. She has studied and performed
with many well respected masters of Spanish dance:
in Spain, at the Amor de Dios Academy and in Sevilla
with Torombo, Juana Amaya, Hiniesta Cortez, and
in Chicago with master teacher Edo and many visiting
artists
Unraveling Rhythms is a work aimed at both
transcending and including the musical and dance forms
of flamenco and classical Indian. The work is in tryptic
format with line-ink paintings documented by a video
artist bridging the three sections, as a handing off
of the baton of energy is created between 2,3,and
4 dimensions of space and time. All aspects of the
work - music, painting, and dance move from the purity
of traditions into a hybrid treatment of forms, and
culminates with a total departure of traditions. The
application of the 3 sections morphs from rigor and
foundation into a larger sense of space & energy,
into the interior world of the human form in time.
Contextually, the work travels from the mythology
of our traditions into our mythology's living embodiment
through people (the human form on earth) to the expression
of these living people in our current times. The third
section is treated as a meditation acknowledging the
recent tsunami 2004. All contributing disciplines
- dance, painting, and music - gradually move from
a general sense of "fullness" to "emptiness."
The work culminates in the meditative assemblance
of 295,000 - the human loss incurred in tsunami 2004
- ink dots slowly amassing. That dense blackness then
shatters off the projected screen onto the living
dancers, leaving whiteness behind. Our loss is carried
by our living wrapped in the emptiness; the silence
of our loss we embrace, we sit, we acknowledge.
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Wendy Clinard and Siri Sonty performing
a hybrid dance of Kuchipudi and Spanish danceform,
Flamenco.

Blending Indian, Spanish dance forms
LAS GUITARRAS DE ESPANA (THE GUITARS OF SPAIN) and CLINARD
DANCE THEATRE: Unraveling Rhythms
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